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“The sovereignty of every individual is not only indispensable to security, but constitutes the natural liberty of mankind, and must be restored back to each, before society can be harmonious.” – Josiah Warren, True Civilization

“This is the great weakness and tragedy of communism and any other system that argues that the end justifies the means, for in a real sense, the end is pre-existent in the means; the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. In the long run of history, immoral means cannot bring about moral ends. Destructive means cannot bring about constructive goals.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., address to Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, October 15th, 1962

[updated January 5th, 2018]

by Colin Denny Donoghue

While it’s true many people are wrapped up in a consumer-corporate lifestyle and think trying to change the world is a naïve or impossible task not worth even trying, many other people are more actively compassionate and are giving a lot of time and effort to try and make this world a better place. Some of those engaged in this productive work, like The School of Living, have a better vision than others on how to achieve the goal of a healthier and more just society; from its founder Ralph Borsodi’s book Flight From the City, along with the later Decentralism by Mildred J. Loomis, to current vegan homesteading projects like Ahimsa Village, I find the ideas and praxis of philosophy toward achieving a sustainable society to be very on-target. Unfortunately many others do not yet see how crucial it is for people to be connected to the Earth in a more direct, natural and free way in order for there to be global social-justice, and in order to restore our environment, health, and sanity.

In “close-but-no-cigar” fashion (i.e. missing the crucial point), modern conservationists, scientists, sociologists and radical activists give key ideas for stopping and reversing the destructive ecological & health crisis we face, namely: we need much more decentralization of power, localization of organic food production, and we need much less environmental destruction, pollution, waste and radiation. As good as these ideas are, the critical problem with them is that their version of decentralization, localization and sustainability only go to a certain limited extent (limited within corporate/statist/monetary systemic restraints), and are alternatives accessible only to a relatively narrow segment of the world population. Here I will argue that the decentralist/localization/sustainability movement absolutely needs to go further, i.e. all the way to the universal individual level, in order for us to achieve the significant positive change the world needs. This “extreme” decentralization, localization and sustainable living would not only be more effective, but is in fact the only way to a globalization of equality and personal/environmental health. And it leads to a clear and specific destination: communities of sovereign zero-waste veganic homesteads. That way of life produces none of the environmental/health/life-destruction that is dominant now, and also fosters human equality, well-being and flourishing; more on why this is the real solution will be explained shortly.

The difference in perspective between what most people are offering as solutions and what’s offered here is fundamentally a difference between inside & outside-the-box thinking; the former is limited within the socioeconomic box (the box that is actually the main source of the problems), looking for within-the-system top-down solutions from State policies and programs (or the International Monetary Fund, etc.), rather than bottom-up solutions from autonomous individuals & the Earth’s ecology. This can also be looked at as a collectivist versus individualist way of thinking, though the former is often mistakenly equated with community, and the latter with a selfish isolationist perspective. In reality, collectivism means forced assimilation into a social-system while individualism has the ethical superiority of valuing individual sovereignty, self-responsibility, and voluntary relations.

So first let’s review some of the best inside-the-box/collectivist strategies for a more sustainable society, and see what their pluses and minuses are; they include:

The United Nations, and their programs, like “The International Year of Family Farming”

The Green Party (gp.org), other Political Parties & Organizations, & “Food Sovereignty” Organizations

“Public” Banking

“Micro-credit”/loans for Small Traditional Craft Business Start-ups & “Educating” the “undeveloped.”

Land Trusts (like those of the School of Living, Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust, etc.)

Large Community Gardens/Farms, e.g. the former South Central Farm (thegardenmovie.com), the Gill Tract Farm (occupythefarm.org) & Guerrilla Gardening, e.g., as in Los Angeles (canyoudigthisfilm.com, laguerrillagardening.org)

“At least in outline, it is already becoming clear what sort of society people seek once they have broken the spell of the urban-industrial Reality Principle. We can see the postindustrial alternative emerging in a thousand fragile experiments throughout America and Western Europe on the part of the young and the no longer young: communes rural and urban; voluntary primitivism; organic homesteading; extended families; free schools; free clinics; handicraft cooperatives; community development coops; Gandhian ashrams… Here is the new society piecing itself inventively together within the interstices of the old.” … “Their anarchism is the healthiest kind: a natural, rebelliously personal response to the distortions of urban-industrialism life and the technocracy, as spontaneous as the need to breathe free after airless captivity. … Anarchism has always been, uniquely, a politics swayed by organic sensibility; it is born of a concern for the health of cellular structure in society and a confidence in spontaneous self-regulation. … For those who embark on this inner journey, anarchism becomes a natural tendency; it is the political style most hospitable to the visionary quest. … They disaffiliate, decentralize, cultivate non-violent relationships, look after their own needs. … And wherever the community takes up its fight, it gives new life to those values of personal liberty and dignity which the artificial environment has all but obliterated.”

– Theodore Roszak, Where The Wasteland Ends

Most of these examples of people trying to live a more sustainable and satisfying life on this planet are admirable and inspirational, but they are also very limited in what they can accomplish, and that’s because they all ignore the root injustice: humans having to pay, work for or obey other humans just for a place to live & sleep on this planet. If people could simply have their own homestead gardens and orchards that they could care for full-time, and not need to take part in and pay for destructive corporate/industrial/political systems, we could have a halt to all this destruction, and see healthy and sustainable communities flourishing globally instead. But rather than recognize that, most people mentally gravitate toward false systemic solutions, thinking they are more “realistic.”

The U.N. Declared 2014 the “Year of the Family Farmer” in response to growing numbers of people wanting to live a more natural, sustainable self-sufficient lifestyle. Many people involved with this are undoubtedly good-intentioned, however this declaration is ultimately just a propaganda scheme; governments will never support everyone having the opportunity to establish independent/sovereign family farms, since that would end the funneling of wealth to themselves, and their corporate partners. This “Year of the Family Farmer” is just another example of politicians pretending to be on your side, pretending that they are really going to do something significant to aid the cause you are a part of, and of course it always turns out to be a lie, just like this will be. This is just like with the U.N. Climate Change Conference of 2012; Increasing numbers of people have become concerned about climate change/global warming, so the governments got together for a big climate change conference and invited people to join the discussion, and what came of it? Basically nothing. As an article stated even just soon after it began: “The United Nations Climate Change Conference beginning in Doha this week is turning into a farce.” But it served its purpose: for most people it reinforced the belief that government is on their side, that they’re “working on it.” So non-activists remain complacent, and activists keep pouring their time and energy into trying to make governing better, continuing the centuries-old quest for establishing “good government.” Some even think we should expand the United Nations to be a One World Government, saying that if there were no separate nations to fight against each other there would be world peace; never-mind that the whole world could become a totalitarian dystopia, never-mind that centralized power over others always leads to corruption, tyranny and destruction. A global government and global military/police would be the ultimate achievement for the control freaks; some say they would even engineer World War 3 in order to implement the “solution” of a global State. Maybe, just maybe, this quest for establishing good governance is ultimately futile?

I used to be a fairly active member of the Green Party (I would promote and vote for Green Party candidates, etc.) and I still find the work they do to be laudably good-intentioned. They don’t accept corporate funding, are for labeling all GMO food, are against the death penalty, and have “10 Key Values” which include: “Social-Justice & Equal Opportunity,” “Nonviolence,” & “Decentralism.” They are also for a living wage and universal healthcare, along with electoral reforms to increase the level of democracy. Yet what I’ve realized since my Green Party days is that all of these reforms mistakenly take the root injustice as a given. Advocating a living wage takes jobs/monetary-dependency as a given, universal healthcare takes taxation as a given, and reformed voting/elections takes forced citizenship as a given. Those givens are actually aspects of slavery being taken as inseparable to human existence; as if it was a part of Nature/Creation, which of course it is not. Slavery is not natural, nor is it a form of Nonviolence. Nor a form of Social-justice and Equal Opportunity. Nor a means for widespread Decentralism. The slavery of social-systems is actually diametrically opposed to each of these values, and that ethical contradiction is why the Green Party and like-minded activists have had limited to no success in world politics, and that’s why that impotence will always be the case.

We are dependent on money because we are denied our birthright (under threat of arrest) to a fair share of cost/tax-free sovereign land & water, that we could use for homestead self-sufficiency & gift-economy communities (which would be true equal opportunity and decentralism). Property tax, along with all taxation, despite propaganda on “representation” and “social fairness” is actually a form of theft, an act of tyranny and injustice/unfairness. Seeking to establish a truly good government is actually acting in ignorance of the fact that governance is a form of slavery, and slavery can never be made good (you can’t be a good slave-master!), it’s a total impossibility, as history has shown over and over, and as current reality continues to show. To overlook these acts of violence that are the foundation of social-systems as if they are inconsequential, as I used to, is really just ignorance in action, ignorance that doesn’t really help other people, other species, or the Earth.

Even more on-target activism like that working for food sovereignty (e.g. usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org) and community empowerment (e.g. beblackandgreen.com) still face inevitable limited success since it still accepts the fundamental injustice of denying individual sovereignty (and thereby individual empowerment). Trying to get more organic produce into inner cities is definitely a good thing (e.g. growingpower.org), but by taking land costs/control and taxation as a given they can never establish real community-sufficiency (not enough land access and free time to cultivate it), and are simultaneously supporting a system that is continuously destroying our health and the environment overall (whichbasically nullifies the work they are doing). They are seeking social-justice while at the same time accepting the root social-injustice. Protesting a war while paying for it through taxes at the same time doesn’t stop the war, and likewise wanting healthier communities with more local control while supporting social-systems that completely undermine that purpose is an exercise in futility.

The “public” bank idea, in theory, is going toward decentralization of power (namely away from the corporate “Federal” Reserve), but isn’t addressing the true foundation of centralized power: land control and taxation. So therefore its positive effect can only be minimal to none; most people would still be living their lives just as before, money-slaves working for corporations, government and banks, just so they can afford food and a roof over their head. Reforms like “public” banks also operate on the theory that the State = the public/community, i.e. that representation of the people/public is an actual reality, and so if money was controlled by government instead of corporate banks, then we could undo “our” debt and “our” funding of unethical ventures. Thinking that it’s just the corporate bankers that are the problem, and if we could just get the State in control of banking (whether national, state-level, or city officials) everything would be great, is just an expression of indoctrination; reality clearly shows true representation by government does not, can not, and never has existed. The same misconception is shown by activists that demand we “Tax the Rich” (e.g. the “Robin Hood Tax”), assuming that once more money is in the “public” treasury it’s going to be distributed to the needy in a fair and effective way, which again is clearly not the case. You’ve probably heard statistics like “The amount of money needed to eradicate world hunger (or convert completely to clean energy) is just a fraction of the money we spend on militarism” haven’t you? The hundreds of billions of tax dollars wasted going into building the latest fighter jet indeed could instead do a lot of good, but statistics like these are unfortunately usually coupled with the “common sense” that we simply need to redirect where our money goes, as if we were ever really in control of what government does with our money. This perspective is fundamentally flawed in using the term “we” when actually referring to government (e.g. “If we just spent more money on organic gardens rather than more military technology…”); this is false identification with the outer pain-body, and just like the inner pain-body (as described by author Ekhart Tolle), there is no reforming it, it is essentially destructive and the only way to deal with it effectively is to dis-identify with it and reject its lies, irrationality and immorality. This perspective also forgets the fact that government officials are guaranteed payment no matter whether they perform their duty well or not, and they notoriously use taxes for war-making and supporting destructive corporations in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, etc.. Because of this the public bank strategy, along with complaining about misused tax dollars and demanding more transparency and higher taxes for the rich, as if any of that can really be effective, is extremely erroneous; these ideas are actually based on delusion, the delusions that government is “us,” and at its core a good and necessary thing; the opposites are the truth. Perhaps it makes sense then that the real solution might actually be to completely end the abusive relationship with these so-called representatives and care-takers? In other words, maybe anarchism isn’t such a crazy idea after all?

Micro-credit loans for traditional craft small-businesses as a solution for those in the “Third World” is also fundamentally flawed. The lives and culture of “undeveloped” people are corrupted by monetary-dependency and debt when these loans are made commonplace, and their quality of life is tied to consumer-product sales, not the natural abundance offered by the Earth. Most people accept that indigenous peoples who have been living in a certain area freely for centuries shouldn’t have to suddenly start paying other humans money to live there, so why is this monetary-slavery “development” seen as a good thing? And related to this: why is it thought of as okay for everyone else “born into” a social-system to have to pay just to live on the Earth? We are all indigenous to the Earth; where you are born on the planet shouldn’t determine if you have to pay or how much you have to pay those deemed “officials” in that region. Another major problem with this micro-credit model is that it’s usually coupled with an invasive “education” program. Education is touted as key for a better world, and while that’s true to a large degree, it’s not true of the sort of education they’re pushing, which is more an indoctrination program into corporatist/industrial civilization than it is a teaching of natural skills and wisdom. The latter is what traditional cultures have been passing down to their children for countless generations on their own, the former is pushing assimilation to the money-slave paradigm (a debt culture made complete by the loans). Putting African (or Nepalese, etc.) children in uniforms, teaching them English and how to use computers is called progress, but it’s actually destroying traditional cultures and replacing them with a technocracy mono-culture of corporatist/statist control.

Community Land Rights is definitely going in the right direction, and sounds right on-target with mission statements like this one from the The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund: “Our mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature.” The words are more radical than the actions however; starting with the mention of “self-government,” that’s not what they’re really advocating, real self-government would be individual autonomy. By ignoring the individual and framing the issue at the community level, it neglects the problems of defining a community, like what its borders are and which people exactly are members of the community and who do not (and how that defining and bordering is accomplished without aggression toward individuals). The main flaw is not recognizing individual sovereignty and instead going with a form of collectivism, which is the same framework that formed nation-states, the same framework that got us into this deplorable situation in the first place. The battle shouldn’t be between a small collective (a dubiously defined community) and a large one (a nation-state), the battle should be framed in the more fundamental issue of individuals vs. forced collectivism; otherwise one is taking part in the very evil that they are fighting against, which is an irrational, immoral and ineffective course of action. Naturally though individuals in most cases will want to (and for practical purposes should) voluntarily work and resist together, but the key word there is voluntarily, which signifies that each individual is respected and treated as a sovereign woman or man. Plus attempting a community-based legal strategy is obviously doomed to failure on a large-scale since living truly free will always be illegal, otherwise there would be no legal system, and the lawmakers aren’t likely to approve doing away with their jobs and “authority!”

Then the idea of the “Rights of Nature” was also mentioned in the above quote, and more and more mentioned elsewhere nowadays; this may sound good at first, but you must realize that these Rights are decided by the State/United Nations, and they override the Rights of the Individual; in other words this idea as it’s being promoted means more control of Nature by the State and possibly no land or water ownership whatsoever for the individual! (fitting the definition of Communism by the way!) This is the exact opposite direction we need to go in, the right direction being toward sovereign veganic homesteading land & water for all. What rational, moral or true reason is there to think that letting States, with their horrible track record on environmental conservation (colluding with and supporting destructive industries), would be the best people to decide what the “Rights of Nature” are? Natural and voluntary egalitarian communities, i.e. a society without slavery, would most definitely protect the environment better than those that have been destroying it the most! This “Rights of Nature” idea, if fully implemented and expanded in scope, would inevitably lead to some version of what some call “Eco-tyranny,” or the “Green Agenda/Agenda 21.” When will people learn that power always corrupts, and so we are better off respecting the rights of the individual, which includes their right to a fair share of land & water to utilize and conserve rightly (i.e. for veganic homesteading)? When will people learn to stop pointlessly looking to a form of slavery to be the means of liberation/salvation/harmonization?

Sustainability strategies that rely on advanced technology, like the Zeitgeist Movement, & the Venus Project, which “proposes a system in which automation and technology would be intelligently integrated into a overall holistic socioeconomic design” are severely flawed for a few reasons: a) they ignore or distort the environmental impact of the resource-extraction, production, distribution and waste of all that ultra advanced technology, along with the fact that cities are inherently unsustainable since they go beyond the carrying-capacity of the land, requiring the mass importation of resources and export of wastes b) they ignore or distort the problem of the masses being dependent on the few specialistwannabe philosopher kings who have the resources to manufacture technology like robots (specialists who also implement their design & programs), and the problem that these specialists will expect mandatory obedience and compensation by the masses c) they ignore or distort the negative human-health effects from radiation and toxin exposure from that technology and d) they promote a collectivist society (on floating cities at sea no less!) where individual sovereignty (which includes land & water as a birthright) is still not recognized. (Also the more things are controlled by automated robotic technology, obviously the less people have control over their daily lives.) Another critical problem of current technological offerings is that they don’t solve the major crisis we face known as Peak Oil, i.e. our modern society is completely dependent on petroleum oil to continue as is (and of course there is major industrial growth world-wide pushing energy demands even farther), and the oil is quickly running out. If everyone was living in self/community-sufficient veganic homestead communities (perhaps with home distillers producing ethanol/gas for modified vehicles), the suffering and chaos likely to come when cities no longer have food coming in (via petroleum-fueled trucks) and people living in the suburbs are no longer able to drive to work, could be avoided. (This model of sovereign veganic homesteads solves problem after problem, while technology and social-systems just create more and more problems!)

The Venus Project/Zeitgeist Movement advocates a moneyless resource-based society ruled by “natural law,” and that part sounds pretty good, but if those resources and people’s lives are actually managed by specialists and their robotic unsustainable technology, and the natural laws of freedom and non-aggression are ignored, not so much! They claim that the programs running all the robots and resource distribution will be “open-source,” run by “the people,” following purely principled and logical rules… Hmm, funny how that sounds exactly like what the founding of the USA and countless other States was supposed to be based on! This is just the same collectivist package with new deceptive/deluded intellectual wrapping; ignoring the fallacy of “representation” which actually violates the sovereignty of the individual, ignoring how social-systems are fundamentally forms of slavery (even when supposedly based on rational/ethical principles) and that slavery has never and can never produce social-justice/harmony/sustainability. Collectivist schemes like these in particular are a form of autocratic governance known as Technocracy; another version of this is being pushed through installation of “smart-meters” which are part of the “smart-grid,” wherein all of your home energy use is monitored, and can be controlled (e.g. heating & cooling operation), via unseen officials (and/or hackers) that connect to your home via the irradiating wireless communication installed with the new digital-meters. Signing up for totalitarianism is not so smart; reject this technology being installed on your house without your permission.

Back to other strategies for a sustainable society, most small farms face an uphill battle competing with huge subsidized farms; it has become increasingly difficult in recent decades for small-scale farmers to stay in operation within the current systemic framework, as highlighted in a recent Oregonian newspaper article, wherein a small-scale farmer said: “It’s very hard work, little sleep, but we can make it work.” Hardly sounds like Paradise, and also there is the not-so-minor problem with this model that it is not accessible to most people on the planet. Even for those that are willing to face the unnecessarily long hours of a corrupted natural lifestyle, most can’t afford the land costs and taxation that are demanded within this political-economic system to even try and make some profit as a small farm. Another problem with this model is exemplified by San Francisco’s Little City Farm (littlecitygardens.com), where “urban farmers… turned an empty ¾ acre plot of land into a thriving urban farm that sells produce to local restaurants throughout the city. [BUT…] Despite their success, they were constantly worried about what would happen if the owner decided to sell the land.” Five-year leases and unreliable restaurant arrangements do not foster a real long-term relationship with the land, which is needed for economic and ecological security, along with strong communities and spiritual connection with Nature; it leaves the growers in a constant state of worry about how long they will be able to do what they are doing. The same problem obviously holds true for work-exchanges on organic farms, gardens, nurseries and homesteads (e.g., wwoof.net). Although it is a good thing for people to have opportunities to do more natural work and disconnect more from cities and the monetary-system (I’ve done it several times myself), there is no long-term relationship with the land possible, since it is someone else’s land, and there are also the problems of being subservient to and dependent on that land-owner (who are often more mentally disturbed; moving up the pyramid actually necessitates that because of Karmic Law, being in an unnatural position of power is to be in alignment with the root injustice, which is an evil, and to be in alignment with evil one is necessarily disturbed). This is along with other problems I will now note that can be found with more natural living that’s still within the system, problems that can arise even more at an intentional community than at a brief work-exchange, since there is usually more time for the bad karmic root to mature with the former.

Intentional communities and eco-villages may be more accessible to some poor people (yet with no guarantee of acceptance, resonance, or availability), but one does not have complete individual freedom, they are subject to the collective; the lack of personal space and privacy, and choice of who to live near or with and how, is a common source of disharmony in intentional communities. Whether with extensive interviews and applications or with more of an open-door policy, oftentimes it turns out that people don’t get along in one way or another, whether it’s the “hard-worker vs. free-loader” dynamic, or changes in personal/sexual relationships, etc. Sovereign space, provided by sovereign homesteads, solves these problems, problems that are unavoidable, because as long as the root injustice is ignored, there must be problems. To make this karmic reality more clear, even when land-based intentional communities were made up of members who were mostly on the same page, united by a mutual moral framework, their projects have still been repeatedly undermined and destroyed by the economics they are told they are required to accommodate, namely land costs and taxation. In 1971 in Summertown, Tennessee “the twentieth century’s largest single cooperative utopian community” began, simply called “The Farm,” and did well maintaining their more free & natural way of life for about a decade, until the root injustice caught up with them in the form of a debt of over a million dollars. The debt coincided with the American farm crisis of the late 1980’s, which was basically a result of dependence on the larger political/economic system. Despite their hard work and excellent crops they had to start charging a membership fee to live there, but since there were little to no sources of monetary income for all the residents, hundreds had to leave, about 700 in 1983 alone, and The Farm became more a commercial operation than a demonstration of humanity’s highest potential. So again the root injustice completely undermined a more sustainable and ethical way of life for good-intentioned people, the monetary-slavery that comes with forced citizenship corrupting their righteous endeavor.

In 1851 Josiah Warren (the “First American Anarchist”) founded a community in New York called Modern Times that was very on-point philosophically; it was near fully anarchist, emphasizing the sovereignty of each individual in the community. The main reported problem in the community was constant undesirable/disruptive visitors, due to an overly tolerant open-door policy which neglected to make sure self-love was equal to love of others. That flaw is very minor compared to those of most other utopian projects however. And in fact the only reason Modern Times became an assimilated village after over a decade of operation was due to no fault of their own, it was, surprise surprise, due to economic restrictions placed on them from the outside (i.e. monetary-slavery). The economic crisis of 1857 put an end to the manufacturing business that was the main income source for the community, which was needed to pay the property taxes. Commentators on Modern Times just mention in passing “The main cause of the non-success of the village was the scarcity of employment,” and “Modern Times moved away from Warren’s ideas mainly due to the scarcity of employment,” never questioning whether that needed employment was just or not in the first place. And then the Civil War immediately followed that economic crisis, undermining any possible recovery (and also stirred patriotism among some of the villagers, deceiving/misleading them into abandoning the original anarchist principles they lived by); so yet another State-derived cause to the end of the community, not something from the community themselves. From ic.org: “There were two main influences which lead to the eventual end of the community: The Civil War, and the growth in membership of people who did not share the individualistic and economic ideas of Warren and Andrews.” Again the crucial insight here, which for some reason (indoctrination) so many people miss entirely, is that it is the unjust restrictions placed on individuals and communities (namely land cost, control and taxation), and the propaganda that come with them, which completely undermine an ideal way of life on this planet. Humans keep trying to live the good life while they’re still funding an evil social-system that enslaves them, and guess what? It doesn’t work out! Lo’ and behold a good life and slavery are not compatible! One way or another, as long as slavery and violence are integral to a social project, the outcome won’t be success; this is Natural/Karmic Law, and just common-sense. Please don’t skim past this point; humanity desperately needs to get off this hamster-wheel of denial. Modern Times could have continued on into these 21st century modern times, if there was widespread rejection of the false premisses that statism is based on; hopefully their community name was prophetic of a future still to come.

Rainbow Gatherings are free of this corruption by being money-free, but they only last weeks because they don’t own the National Forest land they are using, and will be forcibly removed by the government if they don’t leave. (They are also regularly harassed by government officials and swaths of drunks, both manifestations of social-systems). The shortcomings of these two strategies for a just and sustainable society make the real way forward clear: If we combine the money and hierarchy-free aspect of Rainbow Gatherings, with the best of the lifestyle of places like The Farm (land-based living and veganic food production), and remove the despicable corrupting factor of social-systems, we come to something that keeps the good qualities of both but removes the bad: gift-economy communities of sovereign veganic homesteads. Sadly so many have not acknowledged the clear feedback coming from reality, decade after decade. We must completely remove the root injustice if we are ever going to have a utopian society flourish; trying to accommodate a social-system of slavery is clearly a lost cause! Instead of settling for temporary autonomous zones like Rainbow Gatherings, and small businesses-based homestead/ecovillage/intentional-community projects, why not go all the way to the ideal, no longer accepting defeat?

Failed utopias, one after the other, have the unnatural enterprise of their own collectivismwhile also accepting the collectivism of social-systems, this is themain reason for their downfall. Collectivism/slavery always causes disharmony, this basic understanding is unfortunately not commonplace as it should be, despite everyone’s own life experiences that verify this crucial truth, e.g. the karmic disturbances that arise at the corporate workplace or university setting, institutions which would for the most part not exist in the first placeif it were not for social-systems (these institutions are part and parcel to the profit-seeking economic system, a system we wouldn’t need if we all had free access to land and water). These circumstances and structures of regular disturbance have karmicallyarisen froman unprincipled foundation, namely the lack of social equality with regards to land & water, and people being forcedinto a tax-collecting human farm “social-contract,” which they never signed. And so that faulty foundation will always keep producing disturbances in our lives (we can consider it a Law of Nature); until it is removed and replaced with something principled, namely equality and voluntarism, we will never achieve world peace.

Pretty much the same problems arise for the urban homesteading model, as demonstrated by the Dervaes family in Pasadena, California (urbanhomestead.org); countless people would also attempt to grow enough food for their families, and sell enough on the side to pay taxes and mortgage/rent, but they can’t even get the house or land to begin with because of lack of money. The same goes for utopian off-the-grid zero-waste recycled building-material Earthship homes & communities, which, as awesome as the homes are, remain unaffordable for most people to have under current socioeconomic restraints. To promote “solutions” that only the rich can afford is a skewed privileged mindset, neglecting the reality of billions of other people. Even if you can manage to pay for the start-up costs (mainly the cost of land), there is still no real security, since you never really own the land, having to pay the State taxes for the rest of your life (i.e., you’re really just renting the space from the State). If you’re rich enough to pay off the State mafia without having to earn money elsewhere, as a citizen you would still have the disturbance of having your taxes go toward things you disagree with (e.g., from the major like killing hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and men in the Middle East, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug-offenders while enforcing hemp/cannabis prohibition and building nuclear power plants here, to the more minor like having to have your home meet erroneous State code and inspection requirements, etc.). And you would still have to breathe the air polluted by government-supported industries, filter the toxified water, be exposed to the radiation, live in fear of the possibility of war in your region, etc., all of which would keep increasing over time as States continued to be funded by people like yourself. We can’t expect to live in the kingdom of heaven while paying off the devil; the security and well-being sold by the latter is ultimately a Big Lie.

Urban homesteading also has the major minus of being in a city setting; mirroring Ralph Borsodi’s comments in Flight from the City, again Theodore Roszak in his excellent book Where The Wasteland Ends reminds us:

“[W]e should undertake to repeal urban-industrialism as the world’s dominant style of life. We should do this, not in a spirit of grim sacrifice, but in the conviction that the reality we want most to reside in lies beyond the artificial environment. And so we should move freely and in delight toward the true post-industrialism: a world awakened from its sick infatuation with power, growth, efficiency, [and] progress as if from a nightmare. … What do cities mean to most people now living in them? Crime, dirt, congestion, expense, bustle, danger, noise, aggravation, high blood pressure, unwanted violations of privacy in the midst of terrifying isolation, trouble, trouble, trouble. Why then do people live there? Because it is where the work or the welfare are…” … “The city is their cage, not their home.” “We must find ways out of the city for those who want to leave. Well-developed rural and village life, autonomous small towns must become a live option, a necessary kind of variety.”

The answer isn’t just helping people escape surveillance-grid cities (with their myriad of disturbances) by just making land more affordable through some legislation (which will inevitably be problematic and inadequate); the answer is not needing to pay for the land in the first place, being an autonomous individual who has a free birthright to a fair share of land & water. This is made clear also by a study of Land Reform movements; from Brazil and Africa to China, when you look into these movements you find time and time again that it is the government involvement and land control by the rich that is the hindrance to progress in land equality, and that “land reform” becomes just another corrupted public policy that is used for the benefit of the powers that be. A recent headline from an article on land reform in Kenya sums it up: “Political meddling hindering land reforms.” Just land distribution must necessarily be independent of government involvement, and be at the homesteading scale (a couple acres per household). When everyone has sovereign acres of their own and are living rightly on them, all the common disturbances of modern industrial/domesticated society fall away, and we find Nature nurtures us with a peace and harmony we previously thought was impossible (out of our ignorance and acceptance of artificial social-systems), finding the ecological niche for our species on this planet.

I feel bad being critical at all of the great work shown in films like Can You Dig This, The Garden, and Occupy The Farm, because if you want to see people that are really making the world a better place and are pointing the way for the rest of humanity, watch those documentaries and support these gardeners, also including the very on-point Eugene Cook of Grow Where You Are. What I’m pointing out here is the systemic limitations imposed on these gardeners that need to be removed in order for these movements to have the world-wide positive impact that they should have. More community or guerrilla garden plots can’t be enough to solve the global environmental, economic and injustice crisis because the ultimate solution to that is for people to be respected as sovereign individuals on their own sovereign land, forming gift-economy communities, and community garden plots don’t provide that, nor are they adequate for a family to approach self-sufficiency. (With community gardens/farms and guerrilla gardening, a common problem, besides the amount of land being insufficient, is that when that piece of Earth is restored into a beautiful garden the property value goes up for the owner, and they then sell the land for development at a good profit, thanks to the gardeners who were not compensated in any way, and have all their satisfying work bulldozed before their eyes.) In both aforementioned documentaries, The Garden and Occupy the Farm, we see collectivism (collectivist-oriented activists) fighting a bigger and badder form of collectivism (the State and its institutions) with their violent cops and destructive bulldozers. The institutions and their corrupted order-followers were set on destroying organic crops and a more natural lifestyle, to replace them with warehouses, stores or GMO crops (i.e. the monetary-slavery status-quo). But by not operating from a non-slavery foundation of recognizing individual sovereignty and each individual’s birthright to a fair share of land and water, the activists were destined to fail. The reason that is so is because of the Natural Law that evil cannot produce good. Problem is, most activists think they are fully on the side of good, and although those occupying land for sustainable use are certainly closer to the full good than most other activists, they are still missing the mark by incorporating the collectivist ideology that is the foundation of the very thing they are protesting against. This was encapsulated perfectly in the words of an activist shown in Occupy the Farm who was in conflict with police saying “We’re trying to stick up for this country, this State, and this school!” That’s exactly everything that should be abandoned, not supported; all of those are institutions based on aggression and slavery, and those are both evil things, in case you didn’t already know. And again, evil can’t produce good. Which leads me to a question said by an activist in Occupy the Farm wondering why the University of California, which was instrumental in developing the atomic bomb, (i.e an evil), wouldn’t support something good: “People have been trying to establish a sustainable program here for fifteen years and it hasn’t happened, why is that?” The reason why is because that university is part of an evil system based on aggression, slavery and profit-seeking, it is fundamentally bad, and again it is against the very fabric of our Reality for something fundamentally bad to support and align with something fundamentally good. This absolutely crucial point is usually ignored by most people as some kind of fanciful spiritual rambling, if you find yourself doing that now, trust me on this one, you’re wrong, and the more you look deeply and clearly into our Reality the more you’ll realize that. Again emphasizing individual sovereignty isn’t anti-community or promoting isolation and fragmentation, it’s actually the right foundation for community, it’s the foundation that community could actually thrive in, unlike the fragmented and isolating collectivist-capitalist society we find ourselves in today. In Can You Dig This we see the opposition to the gardening coming from landlords (turning/locking off the water for the garden!), the city/State as well as “hater-ass neighbors” reporting them to the State, all of which are a consequence of a social-system of collectivist slavery, wherein people don’t have their own sovereign land (their birthright as sovereign men & women) where they wouldn’t have to deal with any of that bullshit. So, for all these reasons and more, the ultimate answer is having a homestead plot of sovereign land as a free birthright of every woman & man, just because you are human on the planet Earth, and that being the basis for natural and voluntary communities. Why am I convinced that this is definitely the answer? Because it’s completely sound ethically, and everything else that has been attempted to bring a healthy, sustainable and just social paradigm has been continually sabotaged by the aforementioned unjust systemic restraints and additionally prevented by Natural Law.

These attempts include the land trust model, as done by the School of Living, wherein land is purchased and given some safeguards against corporate/industrial development. It’s a very good model that has helped conserve some land for sustainable use, but the problems, like land costs, arise once again; can everyone afford to buy into a land trust? No, even when working full-time. Is there enough land legally available for everyone to utilize land trusts? No, most of the land is unjustly owned/controlled by States, corporations and the rich who have well beyond their fair share. And even for those that can take part (usually after decades of slaving away to earn & save enough money), their life is often still corrupted further by the need to earn additional money to pay for property taxes and other government requirements.

“We consider it absurd that a few people should possess the earth, and the many not have a place to lay down their heads for rest. We want, then, that the land be accessible to all, just the same as the air, the light, the warm sun rays are there for all creatures on earth.”

– Flores Magon,“Manifesto to the American People,” Mother Earth, February 1908

“Abolition of taxation” is listed alongside “community rights and control” under movements the School of Living supports, and that is incredibly on-point. But those need to be put to the front of the list (plus modifying “community rights” to “individual rights”) if we are really going to accomplish the positive changes we want to see on a large-scale. The main thing holding back abolition of taxation is that many people believe the tax-funded social-system foundation of society is necessary. Before we examine this “necessity” further, let’s just summarize the situation humanity is in right now: Humans now face a massive man-made ecological crisis, along with a massive health crisis, as the planet becomes increasingly toxic and irradiated. This crisis is mainly the result of billions of people being forced to:

a) pay taxes that funnel wealth to the few, who then commit and support the worst acts of destruction known to man, including: war, building nuclear power plants, making and using depleted-uranium weapons, various massive mining operations (e.g. mountain-top removals), hydro-fracking for “natural” gas, extracting, processing and piping tar-sands oil, creating one massive oil/chemical spill after another, supporting massive air pollution (causing ill health, acid rain and destroying the protective ozone layer) including geo-engineering/chemtrails, engaging in massive deforestation (wiping out biodiversity and indigenous cultures), decimating ocean-life and coral reefs (along with killing off most marine life, including the plankton & blue-green algae that produce the majority of oxygen on Earth), pushing health/Nature-damaging GMO foods, approving massive toxic pesticide spraying on our food (along with toxic chemical additives put inside it) and fluoridating our water, making and using militaristic nanotechnology, the HAARP project, etc..

b) live an unnatural lifestyle that is destructive to our health, the Earth and other species, supporting destructive/unethical corporations, purchasing their toxic consumer goods (with their subsequent negative health effects and huge waste, preceded by major environmental destruction during massive natural resource extraction, and then extremely polluting production & transport). [By being forced to work for money rather than self/community-sufficiency via a full-time homestead lifestyle, this destructive corporate dependency is created by social-systems.]

So, the main two sources of the crisis, namely governments and corporations destructively working together, are directly connected to a system that is supposedly necessary. Now if they really are necessary, then we might as well throw in the towel shouldn’t we? If the source of a problem is a given, then what can really be done? Not much, as I have been showing with previous examples of within-the-system “solutions.” Once you can clearly see the root origins of the world-wide crisis, then you can take the next rational step which is questioning the so-called necessity of those man-made origins. This is a more radical approach, granted, but it’s also completely logical. And when you start to analyze these origins, their necessity and goodness quickly become refutable. The most direct way to this realization is to understand the following: Forcing others to pay for things that they don’t want to pay for (like war and ecocide), and shouldn’t have to pay for (namely a fair share of land & water), is a form of slavery. It’s not “representation,” it’s not “democracy,” it’s not a “social-contract,” it’s slavery; and slavery is not a sound foundation for society. Most people born into (and indoctrinated by) social-systems will immediately shy away from the term slavery, thinking or saying something like “No, slavery is just when you are in chains.” That would be an incorrect thought. There are different forms of slavery, but the fundamental characteristic of slavery remains the same, as the definition of the word makes clear: “Compulsory service, often such as is required by a legal penalty,” “A state of subjugation or captivity often involving burdensome and degrading labor.” There are forms of slavery that you may already acknowledge, like sex-slavery/trafficking, child-slavery, and work-debt bondage/slavery. These are all terrible of course and should be vehemently opposed; their root cause however is often missed, taken as a necessary given of society: Taxes are compulsory, with the threat of arrest and imprisonment for noncompliance. Having to pay other humans just for a place to live on this Earth is compulsory, with the threat of arrest and imprisonment for noncompliance. These are both clear examples of slavery that in large part create the conditions for the other forms of slavery, though we have been indoctrinated to believe in the illusions of a “social-contract” and “representative democracy” that supposedly make this whole arrangement of monetary/tax-slavery just and voluntary, which it most certainly is not (a reality Indigenous peoples tend to see much more clearly).

Most people, even when living a wealthy lifestyle compared to most of the rest of the world, will admit that the work they do to earn money is burdensome and degrading to varying degree, some having been mistreated for decades by deranged corporate executives that only care about profits, regularly exploiting those lower in the artificial hierarchy without remorse. Is this not being in a sense “owned” by others, being under their control? Time to take another look in the ol’ dictionary: “Slavery emphasizes the idea of complete ownership and control by a master.” The lower and middle classes of wealthy nations can be said to be in large part owned and controlled by their bosses and the officials of the nation-state they happen to be within the borders of, dependent on them for the basics of survival: food, clothing & shelter. Having to earn money just to live on this planet, we can’t just do natural fulfilling work to attain those basics at a natural pace (a few hours every day doing homesteading work like gardening & orcharding), leaving more free time for the Arts and other pleasures, along with being of service to others. Instead we have to seek various other forms of artificial degrading work, selling ourselves to employers with resumes and interviews. (Even the upper class that has more than enough money for survival and their material desires are still karmically bound to this unjust system, and can’t escape the consequences of that).

Likewise we are slaves to the State by being subject to its rules and taxation with no freedom to opt-out of the arrangement if we don’t agree with the rules, like the rules that we have to pay property and income tax. The number of States world-wide (with their “official” flags) has been in flux for thousands of years, the current number is around 200; ever wonder why you can’t form your own too? Only other special people can draw imaginary lines on a map, call it a sovereign territory and make a flag for it, but non-special-you can’t do that, even if your borders are just around your house and garden? What makes their sovereign land supposedly legit and yours not? Nothing more than the threat of force, which is no basis for legitimacy at all. Starting to see through their deception now? Keep in mind: Did you ever sign this so-called social-contract you are bound to? No, because you are automatically, at birth, considered a subject of the State, which makes you a compulsory subject, and that is just another way of saying you’re someone’s property, i.e., their slave. Every new baby born within the borders of a nation-state is basically considered livestock to the statist control-freak human farmers who we know simply as “officials.” We are indoctrinated to embrace our citizenship as if it is some glorious thing to be happy about, but it is really branding by human farmers, it is enslavement that continually corrupts our lives.

Why focus on the fact that social-systems are actually farms of enslaved humans in this essay on sustainable living? Well, besides that obviously being a topic worthy of discussion on its own, it’s because, as is worth repeating, this slavery is the root origin of the current ecological and health crisis. I am not just “pushing an anarchist agenda” because I think anarchism is a cool philosophy; I’ve come to understand that the fact of the matter is that without anarchy, nothing is going to significantly change for the better; the world will just become increasingly toxic and dystopian because of our participation with toxic social-systems. Could it be that origins & foundations actually matter? Could it be that a society based on constant violence and threats of violence (e.g. pay your taxes and go to jury duty or we will harm you) is actually not the best way to go? Most people just skim right past this foundation in discussion, they take it as a given, that it has to be this way, and so they then get lost in the apparent complexity of politics and trying to manage/control society, not seeing that because social-systems are wrong from the start (i.e. they are based on violence and slavery), they can never be perfected into something that’s good overall.

“The first kings were conquerors. They stole the land by shot and shell, period. Then, they settled down to rob the survivors at a certain rate per year, called taxation. Next, they divided up the land among their relatives or officers in the army, who all became lords-of-the-land, landlords, and were empowered to rob the citizens at a certain other rate per year, called rent. …

Anarchists say that the first crime was the crime of the conquerors/governors, who seized a whole land, cut it up among themselves, and proceeded to rob all of us forever by taxation, rent, corporative profit, money interest, and various sub-classes of the same basic fraud. Anarchists say that the Earth belongs to its inhabitants, not to this small “owning” and “governing” class of less than 1 percent of the population. Anarchists say that the way to stop crime is to stop the primordial crime, the State, and administer the land through voluntary associations (syndicates) of all the people.

Anarchists say that if people could work for themselves — if they received the full product of their labor through a syndicate of fellow-workers — almost all motivation for crime would disappear. If you didn’t have to pay taxes and rent, starting tomorrow, your purchasing power would be more than doubled. If other forms of exploitation and robbery, through the financial-interest system, were also abolished, your purchasing power would more than quadruple. How much envy, how much worry about money, how much irrational fear, ulcers, nightmares, headaches and other motivations to cheat a little or steal a little would survive after this simple economic justice was achieved?”

– from the article Anarchism and Crime by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea

On a spiritual level, the reality consistently appears to be this: We cannot build a harmonious society on a foundation of slavery and violence, no matter how hard people try, because the karmic effects of that unethical foundation cannot be escaped. Even if a politician or other government official has good intentions, the amount of good they can do will be largely undermined by the system they are operating as a part of, because the system is fundamentally evil, since slavery is an evil. Also when we non-officials accept, associate with and participate in a system of slavery and violence then we are thereby supporters of slavery and violence; and if someone is a supporter of slavery and violence, their life will be karmically corrupted by that support. Proof of this is all around for us to see, with various disturbances arising from this root injustice in our own lives, and the lives of billions of other people. This karmic reality is why government continues with blunder after blunder, destructive act after destructive act; if it’s not approving drone-strikes, GMOs, nuclear power and clear-cutting old-growth forests, it will be something else destructive. New branches from the same bad root will keep growing even if activists win a battle or two and prune a couple branches. If you find this analogy to be too simplistic, I challenge you to clearly examine political history and current political reality in broad view and not see how this is exactly what is going on; the big picture is very clear, but oftentimes people miss the forest for the trees and say it’s just the current politicians or policies that are the problem, missing that all of the destruction/frustration/disturbance is actually feedback from an ethical dimension of our reality, an ethical dimension that doesn’t allow for harmony through slavery and violence.

“Society is sick when goals no longer seem responsive to what makes men happier and healthier. Such a society, subservient to runaway production, has become the enemy of life. … More serious in the long run are the effects of unrestrained industry and population explosion upon the ecology. Although few will dispute on principle the merits of environmental purification, most industrialists on their own behalf are unwilling so far to consider it of greater importance than satisfactory production figures. Yet prospects of a fuel shortage throw industry into a tailspin and cause governmental concern and rapid action never afforded the natural environment, all to keep the capitalistic show on the road. It may well be asked, are ever-expanding industry and business that important? Is it really such a disaster that fewer planes may crowd the sky, fewer cars and trucks clog the highways? Does commercial expansion really have such a direct relationship to the quality of the life one lives? The anarchist would answer no. He has always valued the natural environment, and the desire for oneness with nature has been part of his character. The old call for decentralization seems more urgent now than ever, and what once seemed a dream suitable only to an eccentric like Thoreau now is fast becoming a precondition for survival on this planet. … Unquestionably anarchism has its appeals, some never greater than they are now, as a last-ditch stand against the super-organization of modern technological society, as the enemy of injustice, and as the supporter of the individual dignity and freedom of man. But does the average man [or woman], burdened with self-doubts, fearful of the unanswered questions about life’s purpose, want the total freedom that anarchism avows? Many would reject it in favor of the security that comes with regimentation [and slavery].”

– Anarchism: Political Innocence or Social Violence?, by James D. Forman

I can already hear the conditioned responses: “Anarchy as solution? No, anarchy means violence and chaos, we need social-systems to stay safe.” Now if you find yourself having a thought similar to this, you need to realize something basic first of all: Anarchy means “No ruler,” it means a society without social-systems of control, without forced government, it is not (despite the pervasive propaganda saying it is) synonymous with violence and chaos. Anarchy is against violence, the violence of the State that forces us to participate in the destruction of the Earth, individuals and communities. Anarchy, in its pure form, is an unwavering belief that slavery and acts of authoritarian aggression are always wrong; not really an extreme notion! But amazingly, in Orwellian fashion, this stance of non-violence has been totally distorted (by those it benefits to do so) into its complete opposite. Now of course there are some people who call themselves anarchist that commit and/or promote acts of violence (some actually agent-provocateurs paid by the State), but you must use your intelligence to be able to discern between the basic premise of the philosophy and a totally divergent act that is under that label. For example, surely you know of those that call themselves Christian that commit actions hardly in line with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, don’t you? By irrationally equating anarchy with violence you turn away from something that is actually based on a more comprehensive non-violence, and is also the key to repairing our society. Because there are unethical forms of what is called anarchism, like those that advocate overthrowing the State violently, that does not mean there is not a rational and ethically consistent form of anarchism, like claiming your fair share of homesteading land & water as a birthright. To give an example of a sort of anarchist strategy that is irrational, immoral and based on lies (three elements I call the “toxic-trio,” that is always found within delusions, such as that used to defend aggression of various sorts), here is a quote from Aric Mcbay, one of the authors of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet: “Planting a garden—as wonderful and important as that may be—is not a decisive operation. It may be a shaping or sustaining operation under the right circumstances, but nothing about gardening will directly stop this culture from killing the planet, nor dismantle the hierarchical and exploitative systems that are causing the ecocide. Remember, the world used to be filled with indigenous societies which were sustainable and enduring. Their sustainability did not prevent civilization from decimating them again and again.” (p. 391-2) Actually if everyone planted a garden on their own sovereign land that would stop the ecocide, and it would prevent further genocide, because there would be no State-dependent industries or State-dependent militaries to commit those acts of mass-destruction in the first place, they would both go out of business for lack of customers and taxpayers. What has allowed the decimation of sustainable indigenous societies is basically States, therefore the answer is not complicated, we need to eliminate States (and any other form of authoritarian rulership), and the only way we as individuals can do something toward that productively is by claiming sovereign land as a free birthright and plant gardens. If we think there is some violent or collectivist strategy necessary because “not everyone else is going to do that” we miss the wisdom of “let us not become the evil we deplore” and Gandhi’s statement that we need to “be the change we wish to see in the world;” those aren’t just nice ideas, they are actually very intelligent and incorporate the crucial truth of our Reality that the only thing we really have control over changing is ourselves, so any and all strategies for peace, justice and sustainability that ignore that fact are going to be ripe with irrationality, lies and immorality, as the Deep Green Resistance strategies are (which by the way, include assassination and destroying the major infrastructure on which billions of people are currently dependent on for survival). While promoting this violence they also say “individual actions are rarely decisive,” so, very interestingly, this “resistance” strategy is based on collectivism and violence, the very same things that States are based on! If someone were to pick up that book and think that’s all anarchism was about, they would probably never look into the philosophy further, believing it just equates to irrational and destructive actions; unfortunately that would be an example of the psychological phenomenon of false equivalency (a common behavioral manifestation of the toxic-trio), believing all anarchism = violence. Another very unfortunate example of false equivalency is when people say large-scale industrial agriculture is a major problem (which it is), but then irrationally use that fact as a supposed reason why veganism is not viable for humanity, believing all agriculture = destruction, as if there is not something called homestead-scale veganic horticulture/permaculture, which has none of the negative effects of the large-scale chemical/GMO agriculture.

Confusing what’s good and bad (i.e., false morality, another manifestation of the toxic-trio) perpetuates the bad; to think State-slavery is good for us and real freedom is bad is a backwards ethic, a false morality that has devastating consequences. False morality is also of course perpetrated by States themselves on a constant basis in countless ways, from banning lemonade stands while approving nuclear power, hydrofracking, GMOs and various other toxic products, to restricting nonviolent people from crossing their made-up borders while letting known war criminals pass right through, to maintaining a “justice” system that lets people get away with murder if they have enough money and locks people up in prison for decades for relatively insignificant acts, to burdening small-business with tons of bureaucratic restrictions, fees, etc. while letting big destructive corporations have huge tax and regulation loopholes (and even giving them subsidies on top of that), etc. And of course there is the biggest example of false morality, war, the killing of millions of people with impunity while talking of “family values.” The crucial thing to understand here is that this false morality can not be reformed away, it is all manifestations of the slaveryfoundation of States; you can’t produce an ethically sound form of slavery, that’s why we just keep seeing one hypocritical example of false morality after another.

“The modern nation-state is an absolutely necessary condition for the wars and exterminations of the twentieth and the resent century that have expended human beings as if they were inanimate. … It may well be, when all is said and done, that the nation-state is responsible for the extermination of our species or the extinction of our planet. Certainly it is hard to imagine any other sort of entity developing atomic weaponry, for instance. It would be hard to hold the entity responsible for the end of all things to be practical… For the anarchist, such results are not mere epiphenomena of state power, mere unfortunate misuses of otherwise benevolent agencies, but rather a predictable outcome of the state’s essence in massive fatal force. …

Understand: on my view, the fact that we owe to governments the amazing technologies of death which confront us is not a coincidence. It is government expressing its essence in the process of history, unfurling its flag over a period of millennia.”

– Crispin Sartwell, Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory, p. 8-9, & 28

Ever think much about why you have to be molested and irradiated with body scanners at airports to make sure you are unarmed but they can have all the guns they want and nuclear missiles on constant stand-by? Obviously such a dynamic is based on the idea that they are of greater moral and intellectual fiber than yourself isn’t it? That you are inferior, and they are superior; in other words that you are not at all their equal (never-mind what the Declaration of Independence says), you are a lesser form of human life that needs to be managed by them (never-mind that history shows the worst acts ever committed have been by governments). And what does that mean? It means you’re treated as a slave. You may not currently think citizenship is slavery, but technically it is. And the statists that don’t want you to realize that actively disseminate propaganda about their goodness and necessity, filling movies, TV shows and the “news” with any violence or destruction they can find and replay (to keep you in a state of fear and child-like dependency), and telling you that anarchy would equate to even more violence. It’s highly unfortunate that people continue to accept the propaganda that we need States, and that all anarchists are violent and want violence; that’s actually the truth about statists/officials, whose very existence depends on constant violence and the threat of violence, and profits from further violence and destruction, like war and ecocide. (This is an example of the other common toxic-trio behavioral manifestation known as projection, i.e., telling other people they are doing what you in fact are doing.)

“At the basis of anarchist pacifism is the idea that as long as sovereign Nation-States exist, the possibility of resolving the dilemma of egoism and altruism, force and harmony, war and peace, remains nil. The very existence of separate States implies the use of force to resolve every major issue. Just as individuals must strive to go beyond the passions of the ego, Tolstoy and Gandhi implore men… to move beyond the confines of the State and its by-products: force and aggression.”

– Irving L. Horowitz, The Anarchists, p. 54

“[U]nless our goal is the complete elimination of force from the body politic, we are not anarchists of conviction. Whatever the consequences may be, personal or social, our obligation is primarily to maintain that the use of force is corrupting to the human mind and produces infinite damage to the community. This is the principle, enunciated by Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, Jesus Christ, Tolstoy, Kropotkin, and Gandhi, on which we can never compromise.”

– Herbert E. Read, El Anarquismo en la Sociedad Capalitista

If you think “the time is not right” for real freedom, for individual autonomy & sovereign land being a birthright of all, then when will it be right? When will you know the time has come? Dismissing needed radical changes by saying “that’s not going to happen this century” is just a self-fulfilling prophecy; the changes will happen once people stop immediately dismissing them as impossible! If everyone keeps waiting for everyone else to begin the real change then everyone will just keep on waiting, at their own expense and the expense of future generations; we must snap out of our fearful pessimism and actually do what we know is right. Yes it can be intimidating to oppose a system of violence & slavery, but unless we do, we will be abandoning the children of the world to a dystopian wasteland, abandoning them out of fear; and anyway, couldn’t your life use something more deeply meaningful and important, perhaps even a little adventurous/dangerous? Supporting the right revolution can actually be very enlivening (while we still have life to live, remember any day may be our last!), and can help open us up to a supportive spiritual dimension of Reality. And with the major crises we now face, it’s a more appropriate time than ever to do what would actually be effective, rather than keep trying more reformist tactics that never (and can never) lead to significant positive global change. “The time is always right to do what’s right,” as Martin Luther King Jr. said. We need to recognize the need for outside-the-system solutions, and take courage and inspiration from movements that have already moved forward in that direction. The following are examples of such movements that I’m aware of, I’m sure there are more inspiring actions going on out there focusing on land, water and sovereignty. [All city and State names used are for geographical reference only, all could be preceded with “so-called…”].

The 2006 “Umoja Village” occupation of vacant land in Miami (see takebacktheland.org and read the story in the excellent book Take Back The Land by Max Rameau (akpress.org/takebackthelandak.html)

The 2008-09 “Kew Bridge Ecovillage” occupation in England; a participant hit the nail on the head when he said “We need to make people understand that the true issue in this world is not the fact that we don’t want to live ecologically, it’s the fact that we don’t have the freedom to do that.” (quoted from the documentary “Grasp the Nettle” (graspthenettlefilm.com) This is following in the footsteps of the English 17th century “Diggers,” led by Gerard Winstanley, who claimed land as birthright (see the historical movie “Winstanley: The Revolution Starts Here” (1975)).

The 2013 “Gezi Gardens” occupation in San Francisco; even the news headline about it is revolutionary: “Occupy Moves Into Hayes Valley Farm, Declares Sovereign State, Plants Kale.” The first line of the article reads: “A group of Occupiers has moved into the tract of land formerly known as Hayes Valley Farm and renamed it Gezi Gardens, in solidarity with the protests going on in Turkey. Hayes Valley Farm moved out of the space on June 1, in accordance with an interim-use agreement with the city of San Francisco, because half of the block-wide tract has been sold to developers to make way for a 185-unit mixed-use development. The new group moved into the 2.2-acre parcel shortly thereafter in a bid to prevent that impending development.” [Over and over it’s the State colluding with business to prevent self/community-sufficiency.]

The 2014 “Albany Bulb Autonomous Zone” occupation at a landfill area outside of San Francisco. The declaration also crucially includes mention of homesteads, thereby pointing to the real solution, Autonomous/Sovereign Homesteads: “We Declare the Bulb an Autonomous Zone, a space where Art and Music continue to flourish… where long-term Residents can continue to maintain and improve their Homesteads.” (sharethebulb.org/declaration-of-the-bulb-autonomous-zone)

The ongoing “Occupy Your Homes” & “Eviction-Free Zones” movement, which can and should transition from success being considered simply a renegotiation of a bank loan, to claiming one’s birthright of a fair share of land & water. Currently they are bogged down with these bank negotiations and “broken promises” from the State… missing the crucial point that they are participating with institutions that are fundamentally wrong and therefore can’t be reformed into goodness. (occupyourhomes.org)

The ongoing War Tax Resistance movement, which can and should be expanded to a refusal to pay ALL taxes, since all are taken without voluntary contractual agreement, and fund social-systems which are the root source of every major crisis and injustice global society faces. (nwtrcc.org, nowartax.org, wartaxboycott.org)

The ongoing Transition Towns Movement, which is “seeking to mitigate these converging global crises by engaging their communities in home-grown, citizen-led education, action, and multi-stakeholder planning to increase local self reliance and resilience.” (transitionus.org/transition-town-movement)

The ongoing State secession/independence movements in places like Scotland, Quebec and in the U.S.A. (e.g., the States of Hawaii, “Cascadia”, “Jefferson,” “North Colorado,” “Western Maryland,” etc.). While not all purely anarchist in philosophy, all are at least going in the right direction, toward the ideal of individual/land sovereignty. (hawaii-nation.org, hawaiiavoiceforsovereignty.com, hawaiiankingdom.net, cascadianow.org, freecascadia.org, jeffersonstate.com, scotreferendum.com, jeffersondeclaration.net, middleburyinstitute.org)

The ongoing indigenous sovereignty movement by the Mapuche people in Chile, and, to quote Lori Gallegos who I am in complete agreement with, “In addition to the environmental philosophies of the Mapuche and other Amerindian groups, I believe that we can draw philosophical insight from Latin America’s long history of political movements by landless peasants and workers seeking land reform, even in an urban context. For example, in Chile, from the late 1940s through the 1970s, many destitute farmworkers and miners came to occupy the outskirts of the capital city of Santiago with their families, engaging in hundreds of tomas de terreno, or land seizures…” (mapuche-nation.org, coha.org/the-mapuche-struggle-for-autonomy)

The ongoing indigenous sovereignty movement by the Unist’oten clan in Wet’suwet’en territory (western Canada) that is resisting the construction of various pipelines of toxic materials used by the very destructive hydro-fracking/“natural” gas and tar-sands industries. (unistotencamp.com)

The ongoing Rainbow Gathering/Family movement, that is based on an anarchistic gift-economy Nature-oriented structure, which can/should evolve to permanent occupations, defending our birthright to cost/tax-free sovereign land & water for sustainable living. (welcomehome.org/rainbow)

The ongoing “Anastasia Movement” in Russia region and worldwide, inspired by the Ringing Cedar Series of books that promote a back-to-the-land, self/community-sufficient way of life. Anastasia gives the crucial message that every person has the birthright to a small parcel of land (a “Kin’s Domain”) to grow their own food, build their own house and raise their family on, without monetary cost or taxation. (ringingcedarsofrussia.org/theearth)

These actions are unfortunately not given the attention and respect they deserve; they point us in the right direction but get lost in the stream of news on activism, and so people miss when something with actual revolutionary potential arises. We need to make more aware and better choices with how we use our time trying to make a more desirable future.

“I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle that will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows us to make and unmake, produce and consume–a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment.”

– Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

We can have “restorative ecology,” we can each repair the environment that surrounds us (as described in the book Earth Repairby Leila Darwish), just as we can repair society as a whole, if we recognize that nation-states are actually human-slave farms that are the root problem we need to completely reject. As the author of that book stated:

“We must challenge the voracious colonial processes [i.e. the spreading of social-systems] that created and continue to create such damage in the first place. Because without that, your healing work for this planet will only be superficial and short-lived at best.”

– Earth Repair, p. 5

We need to focus on and carry out the key elements of a real way forward to a just and sustainable society, a strategy that has the right ethical foundation and therefore has real power for positive change. The problems we face can seem overwhelmingly complex, but their origin is simple (social-systems), and so the solution to overcoming them is simply its opposite (anarchism). Anarchism however, by itself, is not a complete lifestyle and social-justice solution. People dependent on social-services and consumer goods need to be able to live in communities where food, clothing and shelter are produced and shared freely, and that will only become commonplace when a fair share of free land & water is acknowledged as a birthright of every woman and man. Anarcho-capitalism (a.k.a. “market anarchism”) without land equality is not social-justice; the masses would be left to be exploited by rich land owners and unjust usury/capitalist economics, so they would still be ruled by others; and since the “archo” means ruler, and the “an” preceding it means no, the term anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. Capitalist markets are based on artificial scarcity, inequality and competition; it corrupts human nature to be profit-seeking above all else, it doesn’t just create “ingenuity, innovation, self-betterment, and social-service” as some of its advocates proclaim (I don’t need monetary slavery to motivate me to reach my full potential and do something for others!). The belief in the “invisible hand” of the capitalist market that provides for the good of all when everyone is left to pursue their own interests, is confusing anarchism and capitalism; the former is anti-hierarchical and pro-equality (which is the right foundation for such a natural force to manifest), while the latter is based on hierarchy and inequality, so no natural win-win process actually has a chance of becoming dominant. Many free-market proponents talk about how if a business isn’t treating their employees good, or are producing an inferior product, they would go out of business because people would just quit, not buy or boycott their product; this is clearly not often the case with people that have scarce amounts of money (which they need to survive) who will buy things from companies they know are bad, out of necessity. This boycott corrective “solution” also ignores the problem of monopolies; if one or a few bad companies have control of all of a resource, like say water, people will be forced to buy from them whether they want to or not. The free-market advocates reply that monopolies “are extremely difficult to create in a free market” and “highly unlikely.” Well that is certainly debatable (to put it nicely), and regardless, there is no recognition that people shouldn’t have to pay anyone anything for a fair share of land & water in the first place. To ignore the structural violence inherent in a capitalistic society of inequality (e.g. hording resources at the expense of others, the rich living off of usury, etc.), and to ignore the injustice of having to earn money through whatever available means (if any) just to have your fair share of land & water (which is a birthright) rather than being a natural/free woman or man of the Earth, is to be thinking inside an economic bubble that is flimsy and hollow. Additionally, removing government from the equation doesn’t remove the psychological problem of unnatural power’s corrupting influence, it doesn’t remove the environmental problems of an economy that relies on excessive extraction, consumption & disposal, and it doesn’t in fact prevent monopoly, oligopoly, social-inequality or exploitation… market-anarchists have missed the root injustice and so their philosophy becomes only half-right, and half-right is basically worthless at this point, and could possibly make things even worse. The proposed “free market” is actually a war-system like State social-systems; its proponents support a disturbing competitive money-slave paradigm while ignorantly disregarding the alternative of living self/community-sufficiently as “primitive.”

The bottom line is we can’t live more harmoniously, self-sufficiently & sustainably while denied our autonomy and our birthright; the land control, cost and taxation that comes with that denial/restriction make it an impossibility.

~~~

Many scientists and environmentalists are in agreement that nothing short of basically shutting down industrial civilization will likely be enough to stop catastrophic global warming, (increasing efficiency and renewable energy use, while good, doesn’t appear to be enough). So how can we leave behind this slavery and fossil fuel based society of environmental destruction, without making matters even worse? Establish free communities of off-the-grid zero-waste sovereign veganic homesteads, that’s how! What’s a more fair to all life and more sustainable way of living on this planet (and therefore more able to reverse the toxic/irradiated/death trajectory humanity is on) than that? Nothing I’m aware of, and social-systems wickedly stand constantly in the way of that right livelihood being accessible to everyone. In order for that harmless and fulfilling lifestyle (a “return to Eden” if you like) to be a real possibility for most people on Earth we need to a) reject forced citizenship, b) recognize all women and men as sovereign individuals, and c) have a fair share of land & water as a free birthright. We need to cut the supply line to the main sources of injustice and destruction in the world (States & corporations), and their supply line basically consists of three things: 1) Obedience, 2) Taxes, and 3) Profits. Therefore the only real way forward translates specifically to the following actions:

Women & Men of the Earth declaring themselves to be sovereign individuals.

Boycotting all taxation and rejecting all governmental control.

Claiming a fair share of cost-free land & water as a birthright. For those that already live in a home and have some land around it: Transition the Eviction-free Zones/Occupy Our Homes movement into one of forming Autonomous Zones, i.e. sovereign individuals on their sovereign land/homesteads (claiming their birthright to a fair share of free land & water), forming voluntary gift-economy communities. If already existing & occupied houses in a neighborhood became autonomous zones (ideally with enough land/space around them for growing gardens and for privacy), no longer paying land costs and taxation (rejecting the root injustice of having to pay to just live on this planet) then we could build a truly just and sustainable society, one free home at time. For those who do not already have a house and homesteading land: Occupy unjustly controlled, misused and uncultivated non-wilderness land in cooperation with the indigenous people of your area for the purpose of sustainable self/community-sufficiency. This would ideally take the form of off-the-grid veganic homesteads; off-the-grid so that people are not dependent on the dwindling fossil-fueled power-grid, subject to the problems of Peak Oil and technical malfunction or sabotage leading to large-scale blackouts; veganic also to not be dependent on fossil-fuel dependent importations (namely animal-feed and harmful artificial fertilizers/GMO’s, etc.) and also to not support unnecessary slavery of and violence toward sentient beings, i.e. to have a consistent morality, since animal products are not necessary for healthy bodies or healthy soil; homesteads to not be taking more than your fair share of land & water (so as to not be stealing from others), and to avoid the very common problems that arise in living situations in which individuals don’t have their own space, privacy and independence, as well avoiding the excessive/corrupting additional hours of work (and the hierarchy/authoritarianism that usually goes with it) that are needed for the larger (and less sustainable) farming scale.

Thinking this direct-action/civil-disobedience anarchist strategy is “too radical,” neglects the reality that non-violent civil-disobedience is necessary to clearly reveal the evil of States, and thereby destroy the belief in their goodness which upholds them. By courageously disobeying tyranny we further global awakening to the crucial truth of statist slavery; we debunk the false beliefs in governance that are their main stronghold (yes, even more so than their military bases!). Additionally, thinking it’s just a matter of making the politicians listen to us, and also somehow controlling corporate industry to make things right, is a majorly flawed perspective for two big reasons:

1) It ignores the fact that when indigenous peoples and other individuals try to dialogue with State officials about their right to be left alone, their right to not participate or support something destructive, their perspective is continually dismissed by these “representatives.” The crucial truth that must be faced is that States will never agree to real freedom and sustainability, because their existence and power (which they are addicted to) depends on destructive slavery. So the only way to productively deal with that is noncompliance, and claiming what is rightfully yours, namely individual sovereignty and a fair share of land & water.

2) It doesn’t recognize that destructive corporate industries have only grown to the enormous size they are today because of social-systems that made people dependent on their products in the first place. Governments continually work hand-in-hand with these industries, giving them critical support; without the foundation of land control, taxation and subsidies, most if not all of the destructive industries would go out of business, e.g. the highly subsidized and immensely destructive nuclear power industry (Chernobyl! Fukushima!). No corporate reformist/regulation tactic is more effective than putting the corporation completely out of business for lack of funding and customers, and the Earth and all species on it need that level of change now, not “greenwashed” reforms. Additionally, thinking that without government and its (very limited) regulations corporate abuses of the environment will just increase forgets that a) the world is already becoming increasingly toxic/irradiated every year with regulations, and b) it’s the government, through land control and taxation, that makes us dependent on those destructive energy, automobile and consumer good industries in the first place. If people can grow their own food, build their own homes with natural materials, and trade within their own local communities for other natural and artisan goods, the polluting industries will have plummeting profits and power as more and more people go back to the land, living a more natural, sustainable and self/community-sufficient lifestyle.

Also government social services and corporate health-“care” (which are often of terrible quality) will become completely unnecessary as we become more self & community-sufficient; freed from monetary slavery and statist/industrial “civilization,” we can provide better education for our children, better care for the elderly, and better health & well-being through home-grown food and a natural non-toxic environment & lifestyle.

~~~

I find there are two other reasons most people give on why they disregard the Good Life (i.e. sovereign veganic homesteading) when they hear about it: Believing a) “There isn’t enough land for everyone,” or “There soon won’t be enough land due to overpopulation” and, returning to an aforementioned concern that most need further clarification on, b) “We need to pay into social-systems in order to keep us safe.”

Concerning the former belief, as long as immense land ownership exists like the Queen of England technically owning 1/6th of the entire planet’s surface, and the rich elsewhere owning millions of acres while most people own none, to stand against land redistribution is unethical and irrational. Secondly using land for raising livestock is another unethical (and unnecessary) use of land, land that could instead be used for billions of self/community-sufficient veganic homesteads. About 45% of the entire Earth’s arable land is used for enslaved animals/livestock; world-wide if that land was used instead for the production of veganic foods for humans to eat directly, it’s estimated the planet could easily support a human population of twenty billion and more. Right now it’s estimated there is at least 2 acres of arable land available per person, and since most people would want to have a home with at least one other person, that doubles the land availability. But again the main thing to keep in mind is that we are nowhere near a just level of distribution, there is massive land inequality in global society, and this is the main cause of poverty and hunger in the world. There is absolutely no good reason why we shouldn’t move toward greater land equality, greater self-sufficiency, and greater freedom. And no matter how much land there is per person, no one should have to pay other humans just to live on this planet. The drastic human population increase in recent decades is actually mainly due to more people living in cities (most moving under economic duress, caused by governments), wherein they can live far beyond the carrying capacity of the land they live on. This reality is shown in the excellent documentary & book Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, wherein we see another example of indigenous people living in traditional ways, sharing the land and water equally with each other (the documentary said each family had about 3 acres of land of their own), and their population never exceeded the carrying capacity of the land. It was reported that in the year 2008 human civilization went from a mostly rural to a mostly urban lifestyle for the first time, correlating with the huge population increase, a trajectory we definitely need to reverse. However birthrates have been reportedly falling worldwide, so many are predicting that overall population growth will slow significantly, or even reverse, in the coming years. But even then overpopulation of the Earth could be a problem in the future if we continue on the urbanization path, because urbanization fuels overpopulation, and that’s just one more reason why we need a world-wide back-to-the-land movement now. Some “environmentalists” will mistakenly tell you that if everyone lived in cities that would actually be more sustainable, and they’re flat-out wrong. (They cite the large “carbon-footprint” of suburban commuters, but forget that living in the country-side doesn’t by itself naturally necessitate, now or historically, long-commutes in petroleum-field vehicles, this artificial social-system of slavery does!). Cities have higher levels of waste & pollution than traditional rural living, and higher population growth rates, not to mention other disturbances like higher levels of crime and tyrannical police-state actions (most cities now becoming total-surveillance “control-grids”).

In order to disconnect from destructive, tyrannical and artificial social-systems we necessarily must connect with Nature instead (ideally through veganic homesteading); that’s why the control-freaks want everyone in cities, because people are disconnected from the Earth in those disturbing concrete jungles, and so become dependent on governments and corporations for survival. That’s also why the profit/control-crazed don’t care if they corrupt the entire global food supply with harmful GMO’s, because we would then be even more dependent on them, having to buy their patented corporate seed and food, no longer able to grow healthy organic foods provided by Nature for free. It’s no coincidence that some of the most beautiful places on Earth, like the Marshall Islands, New Mexico and Vieques, have all been used for massive nuclear/depleted-uranium weapons testing; evil seeks to destroy what is most good in the world. If we let these highly disturbed/possessed people turn the Earth into a complete wasteland, then our only means to real freedom, Nature, will become corrupted to the point of inaccessibility. (Paralleling this is the Transhumanist agenda, which basically advocates people becoming cyborgs, destroying their natural bodies & minds, and thereby disconnecting them from their Inner Nature, but that’s another story.)

As for the belief of greater safety through coercive social-systems, it has major flaws (again consisting of irrationality, lies and immorality), including:

It ignores facts like a) several times more innocent people are killed by police than by terrorists, and have been killed by States throughout history through wars and internal/external genocides, b) continuing to kill thousands of innocent children, women & men in other countries (e.g. by drone attacks) doesn’t make us safer, nor does state-sponsored terrorism (which the events of 9/11/2001 clearly were) or government-supported GMOs corrupting the food supply, nuclear power & depleted uranium weaponry radiation filling the planet, or water fluoridation, etc., c) there are over a million people suffering in prison for non-violent drug offenses in this country (plus all those wrongly convicted and those subject to various unjust laws/punishments for other benign actions), d) we are never safe from constant abuses of authority by government officials, e.g. having our privacy constantly invaded in public places covered with surveillance cameras and RFID chip readers (being subject to unreasonable searches anyplace and at anytime), our phone/email/letter correspondence listened to, read and scanned, being subject to molestation and/or cancer-causing radiation by government agents at airports, immigration officials tearing families and loved ones apart with deportation, being subject to mandatory evacuations and mandatory vaccinations, etc. All of these actions treat people like property/livestock rather than the sovereign individuals that they are, individuals who, regardless of these facts, may say that they would rather be really free while potentially less safe, rather than supposedly safer while definitely less free, and they have a natural right to that freedom.

It ignores the fact that most crime is poverty-related (both physical, emotional and spiritual poverty), and that this poverty is produced in the most part by social-systems, which constantly corrupt our lives with their unnatural and coercive machinations, making people into money-slaves who are deterred from living truly sustainably and instead rewarded for in-authenticity and environmentally destructive lifestyles.

Forced participation in a social-system is a preemptive attack against humans, and preemptive violence is an ethically and rationally flawed premise on which to base human-relations; you are told by officials that you must pay up “for your own safety,” and this is absolutely no different from how the mafia works. Would you find it legitimate for some random person on the street to engage in the same preemptive attack against you, demanding money from you because they say it’s a preventative measure necessary for the good of yourself and society? Of course not, and the only reason you may think when government officials do it that then it’s legitimate is probably because of indoctrination on “democracy.” We don’t need mandatory taxation in order to help each other, people do that naturally and would do it even more if they didn’t have the burden of monetary-slavery caused by taxation and land/water costs. Additionally, if most of your taxes go toward militarism, and the rest for upholding a social-system of denigration and exploitation, wouldn’t it be better if you yourself directed your resources to those in need?

Perhaps most importantly, it ignores that the immense power and wealth social-systems put in the hands of the few, does far more damage than people could ever do without the immense power and wealth given to the few by social-systems (nuclear weapons, never-ending wars/State-sponsored terrorism, current environmental and human health devastation, etc.). These positions of power are oftentimes sought and gained by those that are already disturbed people (“control-freaks,” “ego-maniacs,” etc.), people who in a natural community would be only a minor nuisance, but when given this unnatural power are able to cause much worse disturbance to a community, and possibly the whole world. The “checks and balances within our democratic government” and the “power of your vote” to prevent the disturbed few from effecting the many are for the most part deceptive illusions (especially with undisclosed “black-budget” programs, and easily manipulated electronic voting, etc.); they have done nothing to stop atrocities like the Iraq invasion with its massacres and depleted uranium weaponry, even though the majority of “Americans” were against it, just as they were unable to stop the horrors committed in the Vietnam War, etc., etc.,.

~~~

Regardless of whether you see the merit of the points made in this essay, or face up to the necessarily very limited success of city/corporate lifestyle within-the-system strategies for a just & sustainable society, there is something that is completely outside of any reasonable debate: if you feel the loss of freedom & peace is a fair trade for the supposed safety gained via artificial social-systems, then that’s fine, take part in one. But who are you to tell everyone else (including of course indigenous peoples) that they also must take part, even if they do not think it is a beneficial trade-off?How is it legitimate that some humans can tell other humans that they have to obey and pay them just to live on Earth, just for a place to sleep on the planet they were born on? Because some people vote every four years for some pre-selected presidential candidates? Regardless of what you may believe, those advocating a free anarchist society don’t need to prove to you that it would be safer than a society based on slavery (a society which has been a proven failure, century after century, culminating in our current mega-crisis). To put the burden of proof on freedom-advocates rather than slavery-advocates is absurd, slavery is completely evil, freedom is a right principle of humanity; those defending social-systems of slavery are exercising an underlying ethical dereliction that supports this backwards world.

The Bill of Rights supposedly protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority, but the smallest minority is the individual, and there is no constitutional protection for the individual who doesn’t want to be a citizen in the first place. (On top of that is the fact that the 13th Amendment is said to protect us against “involuntary servitude,” but that’s exactly what forced citizenship is!). Natural rights are inalienable rights, meaning they are permanent and pre-political, they exist before any government official “gives” them to us. And what are our natural rights exactly? There is widespread agreement that they are most fundamentally the right to Life & Liberty, i.e. the right to a Free Life; the most fundamental right of humans is the right to not be enslaved. And since governments are actually institutions of slavery, they can never give us that right; all other rights they say that they give us are made meaningless by violating our most precious right, the foundational right that all others should come from. Can’t you see that these limited rights we are “given,” the forced extortion/taxation, land & water control, and the nation-state structure as a whole, is just human farming, a form of slavery, that is gift-wrapped in the guise of “democracy” and “We the people?”

Why is it that only States, kings and queens can be sovereign and not have to pay for their land and water? Why not you or I? This is a fundamental injustice that can no longer be brushed aside.

The “kingdom of heaven” (i.e. a heavenly kin’s-domain, a paradisaical family homestead free of animal & human domestication) remains out of reach for humanity not because it can’t be on Earth, but because people believe propaganda, propaganda that upholds the social-systems that prevent a more heavenly society from manifesting. Just as we must all always remain on guard for an internal negative, controlling, deceptive and misguiding influence (“Mara” or the “Pain-Body” in Buddhist and spiritual terminology), we must always reject those that seek to control, deceive and misguide us externally (“Statists” or “Corporatists” in Anarchist terminology). Remaining vigilant against aggression, deception and slavery we can have real liberty, we can be free of the inner & outer tyranny that disconnects us from inner & outer Nature, free of the disconnection that constantly undermines our happiness and well-being.

All of the strategies for a happier, healthier and more sustainable world that accept and identify with an unethical corrupting influence have been very limited in success, and that is because, as I hope I’ve made more clear, they necessarilymust be limited in success; we absolutely cannot bring a more free, natural and sustainable society via a form of slavery. It’s no coincidence that every within-the-system strategy is ultimately unsuccessful; it’s a karmic cause & effect dynamic that people ignore at the peril of themselves and future generations.

“The African slaves built the wall that gives Wall Street its name, forming the northern boundary of the colony and warded off resisting natives who wanted their land back.”

That really encapsulates the whole situation. What is now called the United States was founded on the genocide of Native Americans and the slavery of Africans, and in a much less harmful but similar dynamic, the 21st century urban Occupy Wall St. campers being evicted from city parks across the country are getting a first-hand experience of what it’s like to be violently forced off the land, out of their small dwellings, dissolving their communities, and forced (back) into a social-system of (monetary) slavery. Of course the Occupy camp evictions and the police-brutality that has come with it (and preceded it), though inexcusable, is still nothing compared to the indiscriminate killing and physical slavery that occurred on this continent not too long ago, yet it would be productive to consider where similarity between the two events does exist, and what that means as far as understanding what the root cause of social-injustice really is, and what the most effective strategy against it is.

Many activists today seek to “evolve” the same imperial powers that enslaved and committed wars of aggression and genocide against sovereign peoples around the world, and have since gone on to massacre millions of other innocent women, men and children in other acts of mass-violence. These activists believe the existence of governments can still actually advance liberty & justice, they believe it is just a matter of somehow making these so-called democracies actually live up to that promise, like through more protests, voting and petitioning. However, one may progress to the realization that the violence and slavery committed by those calling themselves government officials never actually ended with their nation-forming; the violence and slavery has continued on in forms old and new, and all social-systems depend on this continuous violence and slavery to varying degrees for their existence.

In America during the past two centuries, activists have tried to reform this institution of war and ecocide over and over, without understanding that this government, like all governments, not only still regularly commits atrocities and was founded on such violence and destruction, but also in fact continues to be violent and destructive on a daily basis just by its very existence alone. What do I mean by that? We are actually always experiencing the violence and destruction of an ongoing eviction by social-systems, an eviction from the Earth, an eviction from a natural way of life that harmonizes with Nature and each other. The Occupy camp evictions, perhaps inspired by the Native American occupation of Alcatraz island in 1969, made partly visible once again how the 99% have all been prevented from living in harmony with Nature and each other, through the existence of social-systems, and the taxes and land costs that come with those systems of human farming. The fundamental issue is lack of personal sovereignty and land sovereignty. We are sovereign women and men of the Earth, and a fair share of land and water for the purpose of self-sufficiency is our birthright; resistance to that fact by officialdom is the root of empire, it is the root injustice.

Social-systems are simply vehicles of violence and enslavement; it basically consists of armed government agents acting on behalf of the ruling class (royalty, head bankers, heads of multinational corporations, the ultra-rich, complicit government officials, etc.) forcing people to abandon natural & sustainable living, so the rich can get richer and the poor made poorer through a paradigm of domination and exploitation (“for your own good” they say of course). The ideal of natural & sustainable self/community-sufficiency is opposed through multiple channels of tyranny, but it all comes down to the same root cause: not allowing people to live as free and natural women & men of the Earth, pushing them down into deeper monetary-slavery and dependence. This is most obviously true with what has happened with Indigenous peoples throughout the world, but it is also true for all that are forced into an artificial social-system where they have to struggle just to pay others to live on this planet:

“Entrapped in our concrete reservations, indentured to our corporate masters, impoverished of our land, separated from the earth, and at last placed at odds with nature herself, many no longer see the issue of freedom as relevant. For them the ring of the liberty bell has long ago been silenced. And, having lost our connection with our mother earth, we have lost our connection with ourselves. … [It’s] an unholy alliance between the living, who must love and respect the earth, and the dead corporate King, who is bent on destroying the earth for profit. People must work, but more and more their work compels the injury or destruction of their mother earth.”

“The Hopis were entrusted with this land from the Great Spirit. To take care of this land so they could live a long time, by protecting this land so that we can have something for our future generation. This is what the Federal Government don’t see. They sell all the land and split us apart. They fence the land around. Our ancestors said that’s wrong. When the government takes over the land then we’re getting out of balance, because that’s not what the Great Spirit wants for all mankind.”

By forcing us into dependence on an unnatural way of living we are also simultaneously forced to fund the military-industrial-complex; we are forced to fund wars we don’t want (and the sickening extreme cruelty that comes with them, like that occurring now with drone attacks in the Middle East, and which occurred in Vietnam, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, etc.), and we are forced to live in a way that destroys the natural environment we need to survive; and yet all this comprises what is spuriously called an advanced society.

“We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay Politics

Those deeply indoctrinated by irrational praise of modern civilization condescendingly put the label “primitive” on the way many Indigenous peoples throughout the world live now, and how all our ancestors used to live (much more in harmony with nature and each other, having little to no major impact on the ecosystem as a whole). Is that modern elitist perspective emblematic of an advanced intelligence? Advanced ignorance is more like it.

Is the never-ending toxic pollution filling the atmosphere and acidifying oceans, along with extreme over-fishing which has decimated not only the fish populations but with them the plankton and blue-green algae that produce the majority of oxygen on Earth(yes, more than rainforests!), a rational thing to do? Is massive natural gas drilling across America that is polluting the entire water supply so much that people’s tap water has become flammable a sign of an advanced society? Or how about conducting nuclear bomb tests and building extremely expensive and dangerous nuclear reactors (to just boil water for steam-generated electricity!) that spread radioactive material across the world which takes millions of years to decay and causes epidemics of disease? (1/3 of Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, feel safe with that?) And off-shore petroleum-oil drilling, that led to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, creating another massive “dead-zone” in the Earth’s waters? Continuing the ecocide, is destroying bee colonies (with pesticides and EMF pollution) that pollinate about 70% of the world’s food supply, show any sanity? And destroying the last remaining large rainforests in order to make more top-soil depleting cattle ranches, anything but extreme stupidity? Or how about putting sodium fluoride, a neurotoxin, in our drinking water? And chlorine, another toxin put unnecessarily in our water (non-toxic sanitation methods are available, and the chlorine can at least be easily removed after being used at the treatment plant), which is harmful to ingest (it destroys beneficial bacteria in our digestive-system), soak in and inhale when we breathe in the chlorinated water vapor during a hot shower, how smart is that? Like fluoride and chlorine, another free “gift” of government is cancer causing radiation: a) Wi-Fi routers are put in schools (despite the countless cases of ill-effect and corresponding parent’s objections) covering them in cell-damaging radiation, b) food irradiation is done for our “safety,” and c) now they are requiring “smart” digital wi-fi meters be installed in homes that emit even more damaging radiation… And then there’s eating and drinking out of containers that contain toxic chemicals like BPA and DEHP, children and adults rolling around in bedding covered in toxic (and ineffective) fire-retardant, using cleaning and personal care products containing a multitude of other toxic chemicals (that can be deceptively labeled on the ingredient list as simply “fragrance“), etc…. (See my “Toxins & Tyranny” post for more on this.)

Additionally, do you think it’s well thought-out to be completely dependent on a centralized source of electricity for your survival, that can go out of service at any time, for many reasons? Or to only have a few days worth of food available at your supermarket for the surrounding urban population? What are you going to do if those shelves are empty on your next visit?

Examples like these of society actually going in the wrong direction just go on and on, and keep increasing in number… how is all this an improvement from what our ancestors did? Is all this really “moving forward” or is it wicked/backwards insanity? We are being poisoned, irradiated, suffocated and put on the constant brink of disaster by this crazy industrial machine which runs on profit and greed, all in the name of “progress.”

“We come upon a contention which is so astonishing that we must dwell upon it. This contention holds that what we call our civilization is largely responsible for our misery, and that we should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive conditions. … During the last few generations mankind has made an extraordinary advance in the natural sciences and in their technical application and has established his control over nature in a way never before imagined. The single steps of this advance are common knowledge and it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Men are proud of those achievements, and have a right to be. But they seem to have observed that this newly-won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature, which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier.”

– Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)

In order to establish a sense of sacred relationship with the land and Nature, rather than an attitude of disconnection and exploitation, people need to be physically rooted in the land, otherwise it is much more likely to be ignorantly treated without respect, care or reverence. For example, if all the waste your household produces had to go into your backyard, you would probably reduce your waste output immediately. Likewise, if the plants around your home were your food and medicine, you probably wouldn’t spray toxic chemicals all over them, or otherwise contaminate the botanical and soil ecology.

Our disconnection from the land is not only a disconnection from plants and wildlife, but also from our neighbors, family and surrounding community.

“One major difficulty which non-Indians face… is the absence of any real or lasting communities. Non-Indian Americans, not the Indians, are the real nomads. White Americans are rarely buried in the places they were born… living in as many as a dozen places, and having roots in and accepting responsibility for none of these locations. … Land, for traditional peoples, includes the other forms of life that share places with us. … We thus move from simple appreciation of land to an apprehension of its sacredness and to the discovery that our analysis must include proper relationship with animals. … It is apparent that the Indian relationship with the land is one brought about by prolonged occupation of certain places. Non-Indians can work toward this condition, but it cannot be brought about by energetic action or sincerity alone.” – from the essay Reflection and Revelation: Knowing Land, Places and Ourselves by Vine Deloria, Jr.

And what is the main obstacle to “prolonged occupation” of the land? The fact that we have to pay other people just to live somewhere on this planet! This is why so many of us move around so much, looking for a different job or because we can no longer afford to live where we are; we are money-slaves, not free, sovereign and natural humans inhabiting the Earth. So people’s lives are oftentimes reduced to a mind and body degrading daily grind, working at jobs they hate, going through fast-food drive-thrus, buying GMO and chemical-covered/filled foods from corporations that damage their health, treat animals hellishly, and further decimate the Earth.

And by the way, what would be a truly “proper relationship with animals,” referred to in the above quote? I, and many others (increasing in number), would say it is a relationship free of the violence and slavery that we wish to escape ourselves, i.e. a vegan ethic. (I will expand on this point later.)

~~~

Just as immense centralized power in the hands of the few is unnatural and causes those with it to become mentally disturbed, so it is with the immense artificiality of our society for the many; living so disconnected from the Earth and a natural lifestyle disturbs all those within it to varying degree. “Eco-therapy” is a growing field of healthcare as more and more urbanized people realize that spending time in natural settings and doing natural activities like gardening are very healing. One of the main factors leading to distress is modern man’s lack of free time that could be spent in healthier and more fulfilling activities (including non-actions like meditation). People actually have less free time in our consumerist/corporatized society than they could in a free and natural one. Without free time the likelihood you’ll ever attain peace of mind, happiness, or gain crucial knowledge of self, society and cosmos, is little to naught. Developing a philosophy of life used to be a main priority among people, now it is often just earning a lot of money and using the latest technology; it is a sickness of the soul, which some have given the name Affluenza.

Many in techno-industrial society don’t realize just how much of their stress and ill-health is really due to their unnatural environment and lifestyle, and so they suffer from stress and illness which they often accept noxious treatment for, e.g. artificial pharmaceutical drugs from misguided doctors who are quick to label them with various “genetic disorders”; the real disorder is this modern way of life, a drugged populace is not the solution, living in a natural way (and eating natural foods) is. It is no coincidence that the most mental illness and drug-addiction is found in city-centers, and that cities are also the most destructive to the ecosystem as well; what’s bad for our inner nature is also bad for outer nature.

“The trauma endured by technological people like ourselves is the systemic and systematic removal of our lives from the natural world… This is also the systemic and systematic removal of our lives from the kinds of social and cultural experiences our ancestors assumed when they lived in rhythm with the natural world.”

– Chellis Glendinning, from the anthology Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind

We are currently in the period of fastest mass-extinction of species in the Earth’s history, faster then when the dinosaurs died, and about a thousand times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Knowing that the Earth’s ecosystem relies on biological diversity, this is obviously a threat to the human species as well, on top of other major threats like global-warming/climate-change and nuclear radiation. To think that humans have now reached a pinnacle in their evolution makes no sense; shouldn’t evolution be progressive rather than increasingly destructive? Shouldn’t we be happier and healthier rather than more miserable and diseased? Tens of millions of Americans are now taking dangerous artificial anti-depressants (giving record profits to the pharmaceutical industry), and cancer is being accepted as “just a part of life” (giving the harmful and mostly ineffective surgery, chemotherapy and radiation “treatment” industries immense profit as well), the masses believing the lies of industry that it’s your genetics that are the cause of both, when the truth is of course that the cause is mostly all the degradation, toxins and radiation we are exposed to in this artificial/unnatural/toxic society.

Some people praise modern technology as representative of advanced natural curiosity and holistic intelligence, yet they ignore all the environmental destruction and exploitative centralized power that goes with its production (and disposal), missing the cause-effect reality/truth that bad origins produce bad outcomes. This modern technology didn’t just come from human ingenuity, it came from injustice providing the basis for a classist society, an injustice that produced the division of labor that allowed a rich ruling class to form, dominate the rest of humanity, and use their idle hands to produce more advanced military technologies and social-systems of slavery. This root origin of technology and social-systems is lost on almost everybody, and why is that? It seems that as techno-industrial civilization continues to erode the natural environment, it also erodes people’s critical thinking, morality, and sense of true quality-of-life; it’s as if they are hypnotized by the money-game along with the screens of their TV’s, computers and cellphones, unable to articulate what really matters in life anymore, and unable to see the real natural world around them any longer. The complexity and unnaturalness of the modern world has led to increased derangement, as the healing and natural characteristics of a simpler and more sustainable life becoming less and less common.

“Continuing global “development” with the same world-view and institutions that have produced the deadly global situation we now face reminds me of one of the popular definitions of insanity: the act of trying the same thing over and over again while expecting to get a different result each time.”

Taking this obsession/addiction with modern technology to the extreme, more and more we are propagandized (in movies and TV shows especially) with the Transhumanism idea that the next step in human evolution is a merging of man and machine (i.e. becoming cyborgs), and even “uploading consciousness” into supercomputers for so-called “digital immortality.” Never-mind that only the powerful few will be able to design and build this artificial intelligence cyborg tech (and thereby be able to further control individuals via the limitations of the design and the possibility of your cyborg components being “hacked” into and controlled), or what their environmental/health effects will be, or what connection with Nature and Spirit is being lost. The same goes for nanotechnology, propagandized as a means to cure cancer (if you can afford such treatment!) and allow humans to possibly live forever, yet the similar negative effects/realities and terrible dystopian possibilities are ignored. This obsessive (and unwise) push for cyborg technology and nanotechnology is another destructive and unprincipled endeavor of man, like nuclear power and GMO’s, that we would be much better off with not existing at all, and, of crucial importance to understand, only exists because of the funneling of wealth to the few via social-systems. The key to keep in mind is that if the origins are unnatural and unprincipled, so will be the results; this is what makes this technology inevitably destructive, it’s a cause and effect dynamic.

Modern technology does not equate to superior experience, intelligence, creativity or curiosity. Let’s be real, most of us don’t know how to make a cell phone (or computer, or stereo, etc.) and understand how it works exactly; by speaking of electronic tech as a product of humanity as a whole, people are taking credit for knowledge and techniques that have been developed by a relatively few specialists (who are dependent on computers/robotics for their work), and generalizing it as the work of all mankind. The truth is most of us are completely ignorant and hapless consumers only concerning this technology; we can put our favorite ringtone and images on the device, but that’s about as far as consumer input goes in most cases. Most people do not have the very expensive resources necessary to create these devices (and many in the world can’t afford to even use them), and on top of that, how many of us would really want to bother with learning this robotic programming/manufacturing anyway? As John Zerzan says in this passage from his book Running On Emptiness:

“Sure, people are naturally curious. But about what? Did you or I aspire to create the neutron bomb? Of course not. That’s crazy. Why would people do that in the first place? … [T]he fact that I don’t want to create a neutron bomb doesn’t mean I’m not curious. Curiosity is not value free. Certain types of curiosity arise from certain types of mindsets…” (p. 82)

Mindsets that are motivated to create weapons of mass destruction and other destructive (to mind, body and environment) technology are disturbed mindsets, they are not more intelligent than the so-called primitive mindset.

~~~

Just as the modern mind-set is not necessarily more advanced than the more natural one, modern technology does not make for a truly advanced society in an ethical sense. Let’s not forget about Freedom, Equality and Justice in this distracting technological whirlwind! When right principles are lost, so is humanity.

Though there has been some post nation-forming progress in social-justice through reform, such as the end of the physical slavery of Africans, has not that slavery just been refined and expanded through greater monetary-slavery for everyone except the 1%?

Why do we need to earn money in order to survive? Why do most of us have to work at jobs we don’t want to, and often struggle to even find one of these jobs? Why are people forced to give their life away to working for others and be subject to various forms of exploitation, discrimination and abuse? Why do people have to unhappily work in toxic factories and for corporations that act against their values? We constantly hear talk of the job-market in the mass-media, but is it really a market of jobs or a market of wage-slaves? What is really for sale? Jobs or people? Don’t we go to perspective employers and try to sell ourselves with resumes, cover letters and interviews? This is of course normal in this society, but it is not natural or dignified, it is a reality of subservience and dependence, denying man the option to make an honest living by his or her own natural labor, to be his or her own master, subservient to no one, living off the land as a natural human being. The job market is in fact part of the human farm we are forced to live within, and us humans are put out on that market for sale every day. (The second listed definition for the word prostitute is: “Someone who debases themselves or their abilities for money.” Working in the corporate world is often prostituting oneself then isn’t it?) And even if you find a job you find tolerable, you must always live with the anxiety that it can be taken away from you at any time, just like how your investments and pensions that you may be dependent on can suddenly vanish, as has happened to countless people.

Being a commodity on a farm is not a secure or happy way to live, nor is being dependent on bank notes that may lose their value at any time (as they have many times in many countries). Our forced alienation from the natural world by the monetary-system is destructive to us and the environment, it is an artificial way for humans to live on this planet; as the Native American saying says, when the last tree has been cut down and the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that we can’t eat money. Our dependence on money and employers is due solely to the restriction from claiming our birthright to our fair share of land & water; we should have the option to not be wage-slaves and instead be self-employed via natural work, subservient to no one.

“When a family cannot support itself, and secure the food, clothing, and shelter it needs by getting employment in a factory, or an office, or a store, the only sensible thing for it to do is to support itself by producing these things for itself on its own homestead. … Insecurity and Industrialism are Siamese twins. You cannot have one without having to accept the other. Insecurity is the price we pay for our dependence upon industrialism for the essentials of life. … …[N]o man can afford to be dependent upon some other man for the bare necessities of life without running the risk of losing all that is most precious to him. Yet that is precisely and exactly what most of us are doing today.”

– Flight from the City: An Experiment in Creative Living on the Land, by Ralph Borsodi, p. 139-147

Obviously there is no such dependence in traditional indigenous societies, there is no monetary-slavery, because these people are living more naturally and freely, they are sustained by the Earth and each other, not by controlling and exploitative governments and corporations. This way of life points us in the right direction, away from this globalized money-machine. This machine has advanced some things, for sure, like: exploitation, destitution, illness and environmental destruction. This advancement of degeneration is now very acute among First Nations Peoples who have been subjected to the statist agenda, like the Lakota, who I will quote here at length:

“Today, real unemployment and corresponding poverty among Lakotas is over 90 percent. The level of self-sufficiency evidenced among even those who have somehow managed to cling to a few acres of land is nearly zero. This among a people who have always been productively occupied in the past, and who have never been truly impoverished.

Meanwhile, the wealth of our land, our water, our very habitat itself is being stripped away, inch by inch, pound by pound, all for the use and profit of others.

And the price we pay for this “progress”? It cannot be measured only in the depths of our destitution. Besides the obvious costs, there is the radioactive and chemical contamination of what little water remains to us, a matter which has led to spiraling rates of cancer, stillbirth and genetic mutations like cleft palate. Every new stripmine, uranium mill, power generating plant and production facility serves to up the ante of the consequences we endure.

The situation is already bad, and it promises to become much worse in coming years. Lakota territory is extraordinarily rich in minerals, and both the federal government and its corporate partners are once again offering “jobs, income and prosperity” to those foolish enough to grant them easy access.

What happens when the “resources” are gone? Look around you. The conditions currently prevailing at Pine Ridge are but a small taste of what is to come. The example of Laguna Pueblo, which placed its faith in uranium mining, is very much to the point. Only a few years ago [i.e. 1977], Laguna had the highest per capita income and lowest unemployment of any reservation in North America. Then the uranium played out, and with it went the jobs and royalties which had made Laguna “prosper”. Now the corporate sugar daddy is gone, the water is radioactively contaminated, and so are the foundations of homes and community buildings, the roadbeds and the farmland. The old economy of Laguna cannot be reconstructed, the new economy is bust, and the chances are that the people will not even be able to remain on their homeland because of the contamination. The people of Laguna are rapidly being reduced to absolute dependence upon unemployment compensation, welfare, ADC [Aid to Dependent Children], commodities distribution, the Indian Health Service and “Christian charity.” So are the Lakota people. The only difference between them and us [the Lakota people] is that their situation is likely permanent, and ours doesn’t have to be. But it could be. If we follow their lead, if we allow the trend of industrial “progress” to continue, our present situation will not be temporary. It will be permanent. There will be no way to regain self-sufficiency in terms acceptable to our own Lakota tradition.

Insofar as the United States and its corporate allies are presently seeking to leave us no alternative but to accept such a fate, they are guilty of denying Lakota self-determination in the most egregious manner imaginable.”

– quote taken from the 1982 Campaign Platform of Oglala Sioux/Lakota member Russell Means, the first National Director of the American Indian Movement

What Occupiers who are trying to reform social-systems need to recognize is that such systems are unnatural and unprincipled in any form. All forms are based on force (e.g. evictions) and theft (e.g. taxes) and so are therefore unprincipled. The domestication of humans through social-systems is not natural, it is a forced deviation from the wild order of Nature, a deviation which has had extremely negative consequences. These unnatural practices are the root cause of most of the despair, violence and environmental destruction in the world, and so doesn’t that reveal the source of what the Hopi call Koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance? Is not something continuously extremely destructive to our Mother Earth, not at all fitting into Her ecology, unnatural? “No, it’s corporations that exploit people and destroy the environment, they are the problem, not government,” you may object, but where do corporations come from? Governments! (They create corporations). And what caused us to become dependent on corporate goods in the first place? Governments! (They tax us and force us off the land which makes us $-slaves). “Well technically yes, but…” But nothing. When you ignore the root cause, irrationally believing it is somehow good, though the majority of destruction on Earth comes from that root, you are delusional if you just keep looking at the branches (like individual corporate acts) and think pruning those will save the day.

“[W]hen we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government which we might expect in a country without a government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence: the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers [i.e. natural dwellings] of paradise.”

-Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

As the Occupy activists are being removed from living freely on the land, like Native Americans were, we glimpse at the root injustice, the injustice which allows for empires to exist and grow in the first place: making it illegal to live as free and natural women & men on the Earth. In some places it has even been made illegal to collect rainwater! That injustice encapsulates the whole root problem we face as a society.

The government claims you are subject to their jurisdiction because you are living in “their” territory. Yet how did this territory become theirs? Officials say their jurisdiction was made valid by the absurd (and racist) “Discovery Doctrine,” that proclaims “lands lay with the government whose subjects explored and occupied a territory whose inhabitants were not subjects of a European Christian monarch.” Uh huh, insane religious conquest/imperialism… real solid so far. “The doctrine has been primarily used to support decisions invalidating or ignoring aboriginal possession of land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments.” So a few Christian European officials sailed over to somewhere they had never been to before, and Bam! it’s all theirs, further than the eye can see! And everybody already living there (e.g. indigenous peoples) are now under their control! Yeah, sounds super legit!

On top of this bullshit doctrine there is the fact that this territory was established via the massacre of Native women, men and children; hardly legitimate means to property rights! The fact is that all nation-state territory was at some point established by conquest (followed by the conquerors arbitrarily and without valid authority drawing lines on maps, designating “their” territory); this is just force, violence, coercion and slavery in-action, none of these territories and jurisdictions are actually valid.

Saying you “agreed” to the rules of a nation-state by simply being on a piece of Earth state officials claim is their territory (i.e. “implicit consent”) is completely fraudulent, just as the so-called “social-contract” that none of us have actually signed and has been forced upon us, is invalid.

Social-contract theory relies on the “implicit agreement” of the public, that is, even though you don’t specifically agree to something, like taxation for protection, you supposedly implicitly agree by accepting some of the benefits of the state, like using roads or whatever (which are necessary for survival as a money-slave). Yet even if you explicitly object to this arrangement and say you want to live off the land and be left alone, this is ignored! Somehow your “implicit agreement” trumps your explicit objection! How absurd it is to call a contract valid that you never signed, can’t opt-out of, and are told that you gave implicit consent for, by simply being alive!

~~~

All of the major imbalance and destruction we observe in the world, from extreme disparities of wealth to ecocide, is a result of humans not living in proper relationship with Nature and each other. Since there aren’t enough resources for everyone to live like wealthy Americans or Europeans, obviously the answer isn’t for everyone to live that way, nor should the tragedy of people dying of starvation and malnutrition-related disease be tolerated either. The way we can end this great disparity of wealth and restore ecological balance is for there to be equal and free access to a fair share of the land and water for every sovereign human and family, so they can live more self-sufficiently via homesteading. This would end the monetary-slavery that creates the massive inequality and hunger that exists in the world. Once we no longer have to pay to live on the planet, we can much more easily and readily help one another achieve greater self-sufficiency; we can have much healthier and supportive communities that aren’t divided within by the stress of individuals trying to survive in unjust monetary social-systems.

In order for lasting justice to be achieved, focus needs to be on these evictions from the land, past and present, while not confusing these current occupations with imperial ones of the past; not all occupations are equal. What distinguishes imperial/colonial occupations from just occupations is the former is the taking of more than is needed to live naturally by the occupiers; the taking of more than your fair share, which is more than a homesteading scale; it is thereby the theft of land and water from other people and species.

Stealing is taking what belongs to others, e.g. forcing someone off land they are currently using or taking more than your fair share preventing other people from using it. Yes people may have been gathering & hunting occasionally through an area, but to say a new homesteader there is “stealing the land” just begs the question of which and how many people are allowed to use that land before it is called “stealing,” and what is a fair share of land & water for each human being? Can I rightly say that a thousand mile radius from my place of birth is my territory, and anyone who tries to grow a garden within that area is stealing my land? Of course not. Well, what about a hundred mile radius? 50? Still no. What actually makes the most sense for just property rights, something that is actually applicable world-wide (and therefore worth talking about), in keeping with the principles of equality, justice and compassion, along with the fact that everyone needs a place to live on this planet, is clearly a homesteading scale. Saying so doesn’t make me an insensitive racist who doesn’t respect anything of native cultures. Colonialism is military conquest by nation-states, it is slavery and genocide, it is forcibly denying people the ability to live their traditional/natural free way of life on Earth. Establishing a homestead peacefully on an unoccupied/uncultivated piece of land is a completely different thing, it’s not murdering/enslaving/stealing like Christopher Columbus. Migration of humans from one continent to another is a natural and blameless phenomenon, colonial conquest is not; making the two an inseparable whole is mistaken. Yes, many people, like my Irish ancestors escaping famine, moved after a militaristic conquest by English and other European governments, but they were not part & parcel to those governments (and to say so to an Irish woman or man would probably be responded to by laughter at your ignorance or worse for the insult). My great grandmother was sent on a months-long journey to Ellis Island on a “coffin ship” alone at the age of 17 because she was the healthiest and the only one the family could afford to send. To equate that Irish girl with the king of England is extremely stupid and completely false. There are of course countless other examples like this of migrating people just trying to survive with no ill-will toward native peoples, yet this fact is often amazingly absent from opining by radical activists, essentially spouting little more than “colonialism, colonialism, colonialism!”, a view which keeps implying the false/ignorant equivalency of “all white people = colonizers” and also seems to be ignorant of the fact that every “white” baby born on this continent is actually a human individual! The main mix-up here is assuming/implying that every “settler” living on this continent has the same mindset as fascist/racist imperialists, that they’re the same as the governments who have deemed them their “citizens,” and that these individuals don’t care about Native Americans, don’t want to live in harmony with them, and are all just mindlessly going on a “white/colonial privilege” ride through the countryside without any consideration for who may already be living in the area. And in staying stuck on that narrow/false thought, one can totally miss the ecological and rational basis for homesteading as a sustainable and fair-to-other-life way to live (especially veganic homesteading); they’re ironically actually caught up in a racist way of thinking (against “white people”) which is muddling their critical thinking; they’re exercising the psychological phenomenon known as projection, i.e. saying someone else is doing what they are in fact the one doing (e.g. being racist).

“White privilege” does exist (mainly because of social-systems, which is the real root problem that should be focused on and countered with anarchism), but how is the best way to deal with that being to deny the freedom and equality of the so-called white people? You can’t peacefully set up a garden anywhere on this continent because your skin color is similar to tyrants like George Washington? Send them all back on a boat to Ireland or wherever? That’s obviously totally impractical, irrational and wrong isn’t it? As is the less obviously foolish activism which seems to have as its sole goal trying to make others feel guilty about things like the color of their skin and where they were born. What’s the solution-oriented point to that? There isn’t any, which is sadly then just serving the status-quo. [side note: Rather than focusing on advocating the main solution of anarchism and being on equal grounds with each other (i.e. equal land and water access), radical activists on both sides often get sidetracked in a divide & conquer program they don’t even realize they are participating in; in academia/off-target fashion, “anarchists” sadly just become another tool of the State/status-quo.]

The answer is therefore that we need to take back the land as sovereign individuals, establishing voluntary communities of sovereign homesteads, in solidarity and cooperation with indigenous peoples of the areas in which we live. The imperialist agenda that led to the genocide of Native Americans and slavery of Africans is of course quite different from the agenda of the Occupy activists who peacefully occupied parks and other public spaces; in fact the motives of each are opposite to one another. When activists occupy a park peacefully for the purpose of greater social-justice, that obviously cannot be equated with the slave-trade or armies massacring women, men and children for the purpose of establishing new national territory or to secure “national interests” (like oil reserves in the Mid East); the former is nonviolent and non-hierarchical, while the latter is extremely violent and hierarchical.

Some object to any occupation at all based on the idea that “private property is theft,” but this perspective doesn’t make much sense as far as pointing to a harmonious way humans can live on the Earth together. That phrase is oversimplified, the truth is that property beyond your birthright of sovereign homesteading land is then the theft of that birthright from someone else. If there is no private property at all, then it is all communal property, and is that really a better idea? This theory, advocating the total elimination of private property, is defined as communism; and that theory has not played out well at all in the real world (a major understatement of course). If there is no private property, no personal sovereignty, then there is no protection from communal authoritarianism regulating the property (and your life); without private property, namely without sovereign homesteading land, concentration of power in one form or another is very likely, which inevitably leads to corruption, injustice and tyranny. If no one can claim and protect the land their family lives on, and must submit to so-called “community” authoritarianism, we are back to square one, a control paradigm, a social-system. Yes, “the Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth” but don’t we all deserve (and need for peace & harmony) our own places wherein we can commune with our families, Nature & Spirit without the interference of others? We shouldn’t get hung up on the term “ownership” concerning land. Yes the Earth belongs to everyone, but if we don’t designate portions to people to be their “own” during their lifetime, how can we insure personal freedom/sovereignty, peace/privacy, and independence? We can’t. That’s why we need to be a bit more rational and accept the fact that designating a couple acres of arable land per individual/small-family is necessary, it would be a principled occupation, not taking more than your fair share. It would also be unproblematic to trade one’s homestead land for someone else’s, not treating it as property in the sense that it equates to a monetary value, but rather as the birthright of all. These sovereign homesteads would make up voluntary communities; voluntary because any social-system or claiming of territory beyond your own fair share leads inevitably to conflict, corruption and calamity. Our “tribe,” or relations that we wish to be near for mutual support and friendship, would be in nearby sovereign spaces, but not subject to forcible membership in any collective or hierarchy.

We need to peacefully claim our birthright through such occupations and stop supporting unprincipled/violent social-systems, we need to stop submitting to false authority and hierarchy. The newer strategy within the Occupy Wall St. movement has been to occupy homes, to help families resist evictions and stay in their homes, creating eviction-free zones (very close to the more on-point declaration of private homes as autonomous zones) and this is a much wiser strategy than the park occupations were (good as those were), being that it is closer to the necessary self-sufficiency dynamic for social, ecological and economic balance, i.e. sovereign homesteads making up voluntary gift-economy communities. Eviction resistance can be a viable transition to a truly revolutionary movement, but thus far the home occupations have not been declaring free and sovereign homesteading land as a birthright, and so the dominating economic and legal apparatus of the state is not being adequately challenged and rejected in a way that can have permanency; the current tactic of settling for some renegotiated payment-plan with a bank is not a real victory, it’s just making the slavery more livable, for a time. There is no just compromise solution within an unjust system, the only logical and ethical way is via complete noncompliance to forced citizenship and having to pay to live on this planet, i.e. declaring individual sovereignty as women & men of the Earth, to whom a fair share of free land and water is a birthright. Then people will have the stability of having a place to live they don’t have to pay for, and community solidarity and organizing can take off to new levels impossible under current restraints.

“Gandhi envisaged for India an ideal that was the opposite of a modern centralized state, monopolizing decision-making and buttressing itself and its decision with varieties of coercion. He hoped… small-scale communities would regulate their own affairs without the use of force. He called this ideal “Enlightened Anarchy.” … From this it followed that individuals were obliged by their duty to pursue Truth, to withdraw cooperation from a state that became immoral, and to refuse to obey laws that were clearly wrong and immoral. “Satanic” was the worst, most profoundly critical adjective he used of the British raj [i.e. rule] and the reason he gave for noncooperation with it…”

Before the police evicted the Occupy Portland camp and fenced it off, I saw a sign left behind, staked in the ground, that read “I can’t afford to be here.” Yes, we have to pay the Rent don’t we? We have to pay off those Student Loans! We can’t afford the time to do things like share food and discourse with our community and be a part of some nonviolent social-justice movement; we can’t afford to be the change we wish to see in the world. We are ensnared by modern techno-industrial society and so have lost sight of what it means to be a natural woman or man on the Earth. Through land control/cost and taxation, governments force us to be money-slaves and assimilate to an unnatural consumerist lifestyle that destroys minds, bodies and spirits. The wisdom and understanding of Native Americans who are demanding real freedom and sovereignty is needed by many activists who are still just aiming for some reformation of the system, reforms that will not solve the root problem to the social and ecological imbalance we see growing throughout the world. Additionally, knowing how to grow your own food, build your own home, make your own clothes, etc. are not “primitive” skills, they are valuable natural human skills that take a lot of intelligence and skill to master (and are satisfying creative activities too); modern social-systems have actually de-skilled the populace, we are less capable of doing the many natural and sustainable things our ancestors could, having become dependent on electronic technology, corporations and governance. Occupy members can unite in solidarity with Native peoples to reclaim their own sovereignty and humanity, breaking the governmental chains that still bind them both.

~~~

The countless injustices against Native Americans has been an ongoing tragedy that needs to be rectified, rather than just continuing on with the countless examples of dishonor and insults added to injury, like these:

“During World War II, in 1942 the Department of War annexed 341,725 acres of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for use by the United States Army Air Force as an aerial gunnery and bombing range. It condemned privately held land owned by tribal members and leased communally held tribal land.

Among the 125 families forced to give up their land was that of Pat Cuny. He was an Oglala soldier with the 83rd Infantry Division, who landed in Normandy at Omaha Beach two weeks after the Normandy invasion in 1944 after his transport was torpedoed in the English Channel, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, helped liberate the Langenstein concentration camp, and fought to the final conquest of Nazi Germany.

Another family forced to give up their land was that of Dewey Beard, a Miniconjou Sioux survivor of the Wounded Knee Massacre.”

There has been successful resistance by First Nations Peoples however, likethe 1970 occupation of Fort Lawton in Seattle. Actions like that, which make sovereignty and land their foundation, are what should continue, and non-First Nations Occupiers/activists are in a perfect position to help. As I pointed to years ago in my essay “Native Americans & Hemp: A Call for Reverse Colonization Through a New Sustainable Paradigm” there is the potential for “Americans” to side with Natives in reclaiming their sovereignty & land (along with claiming their own, cooperating together), and not have the land & water further decimated by government-backed corporate destruction like coal and uranium mining. There has been some collaboration already of course, like there was among radical American activists of the 1960’s who devoted an entire issue (#8) of their San Francisco newspaper, The Oracle, to the “American Indian”, which included the following:

“As the machine increasingly dominates our lives, replacing trust, love and sense of community, Uncle Sam finds it necessary to remove Indian heritage and plug its people into the system. Indians are not a resource to be developed! “America, the great melting pot” has turned into a coerced illusion, forcing the Indian into completely relinquishing his real heritage, as it has done to most minorities. Keep in mind, however, that American Indians are not minorities of the United States, but sovereign nations surrounded by Americans. … [They] now have to pay for the land which they previously occupied without charge. If they cannot pay, as most will be unable to do, they will lose their land…”

The solution for all who wish to live freely, naturally and sustainably on this planet is the same: claiming personal/land/food-sovereignty, so that we no longer have to live under domination and destruction.

What made the Native culture decline so rapidly was of course the genocide, forced colonial schooling and restrictions from speaking their languages and practicing their ceremonies; it has also been due to their forced dependence on the corporatist social-system, the monetization of the Earth’s resources. The reason why most Natives (and non-Natives) now can’t afford to live naturally is because of being forced to pay people, calling themselves “officials,” for “services” that were never signed for in contract; it’s an illegitimate social arrangement, it’s tyrannical. We all need a place to live, we all need food, clothing and shelter. The question is whether governance is the best means to obtain these necessities; the answer, based on an objective view of the present and past, is a definitive no.

“We must learn the homely laws of fire and water. We must feed, wash, plant, build. These are the ends of necessity, and first in the order of nature, the house of health and life.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay “Poetry & Imagination”

~~~

“The essence of what I have said is that man should rest content with what are his real needs and become self-sufficient. If he does not have this control he cannot save himself.”

– Mohandas K. Gandhi, Gandhi, Freedom and Self-Rule, p. 107

Returning to the imperial conquest and colonization of the Americas, we must recognize what enabled this conquest in the first place: military forces. And where do military forces come from? Government. As most Americans know, the majority of their tax dollars go to the various armed forces; war and government go hand-in-hand, war as we know it would not exist if governments didn’t exist, and if it were not for social-systems of taxation and land control the 1% could not establish their hierarchical power (and military forces) in the first place. Sadly many have been propagandized into the short-sighted perspective that the government, and the military at their disposal, “protect our freedoms.” Isn’t the most fundamental freedom to live on the Earth as a sovereign human being, in relationship with loved ones, the Earth and Spirit, without being forced into subservience that you never agreed to? We are not made free by governance, we are made into unnatural slaves by it.

“We no longer see ourselves within the webs and cycles of nature. The loss of a direct relationship to the world terminates a once universal human understanding of our oneness with the natural world. The principle of relatedness is at the heart of indigenous wisdom: traditional intimacy with the world as the immanent basis of spirituality. This understanding is an essential and irreplaceable foundation of human health and meaningfulness.”

– John Zerzan, Twilight of the Machines, p. 124

Indigenous wisdom is desperately needed by those who think of themselves as citizens rather than humans, by those who are exploited and indoctrinated by social-systems, systems that are supposedly run by representatives who “serve” the masses. The truth is a rearranging of those letters, they don’t serve us, but sever us, from the Earth and from each other, through taxation, land control/cost, hierarchy and division of labor. Seeing through the deceitful promises of government, modern technology and industrialized society, we can reclaim our humanity and base our way of life on ecology, on nonviolence, equality and true freedom.

~~~

Tribes are sometimes associated with a hierarchical social structure, false authority and forced participation in customs, but this is not usually the case, for example tribal chiefs are usually not at all authoritarian, they are more a spokesperson and mediator who can be removed from their position at any time if they are found to be irresponsible in some way.

“Leadership in a tribe is an advisory role, not an authoritarian one. (There are exceptions to this, but the anthropological record shows they are rare.) … [E]arly European invaders of the Americas didn’t understand this: in fact, they considered it a sign of backwardness, and so sought out the “chief” or leader of a tribe, thinking that they could negotiate with that person and everybody else in the tribe would then have to comply. In fact, tribal leadership is usually held by a committee, and even that committee is more advisory than authoritarian. Power is shared among the members of the tribe, as are resources.”

– The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann, p. 175

That said, the reason I emphasize individual sovereignty over tribal, regional or community sovereignty, is that without that as the foundation of social relations we are still accepting some level of tyranny. Although tribal territory is obviously making a much more legitimate claim based on thousands of years of occupation, how can the group territory be defined definitely and justly? Who has authority to draw those lines on the map? And what about people that don’t want to be part of the tribe, or because they don’t have a certain percentage of ancestry from a particular tribe are not accepted to be part of it? We are all indigenous to the earth, all of us have tribal ancestors at one point or another, so it really makes no sense that you must have a certain percentage of blood from a certain tribe in order to be entitled to sovereignty and land; that would be an injustice to every child that is born someplace that does not have that percentage, discriminating against them and subjecting them to greater oppression just because of their physical likeness, and that’s racism. The key is equality; all of us being on equal ground (which would be best achieved via equal land & water access), which is exactly what I’ve heard many Native peoples advocate. If you want to live in a tribal fashion with others that want to do the same that’s fine, you can all live right next to each other, but if you make that structure the starting point of society, rather than sovereign individuals that can choose to be a part of a tribe or not, you are still making Nature secondary to an artificial system of man, and that always has negative consequences and inherent problems, as I just brought up.

The fundamental problem is force/violence/enslavement, whether it’s on the genocidal colonial end of the spectrum or the automatic membership in a tribe, they are both types of forced membership and collectivism (though of course very different in degree) and that’s fundamentally wrong, denying the birthright of everyone as sovereign women and men of the Earth; this creates inevitable negative ecological & social consequences. You can’t build a principled, balanced and harmonious society on a premise that is fundamentally unjust, unprincipled and untrue.

So the answer, which respects everyone’s sovereignty, freedom and equality, is to only have the right to make the rules for your own valid territory/property (be the “master of your own domain”), and the only just and valid territory/domain that can be established (respecting the equality and liberty of all) is that of individual or family homes, on their own sovereign homesteading land, utilizing their own fair share of land & water, and no more. We should all be Queens & Kings of our own sovereign domains, this is what a true Kingdom (Kin’s/family domain) of Heaven (right principles) is. (Of course these homesteads can be near others (friends & family) we wish to form communities with; this is not an “isolationist” model for society, it is a model for society that has as its base a respect for the equality and sovereignty of every woman & man on Earth.)

Tribal authority has the problem of individual sovereignty being superseded by a collective, and land being collectivized rather than distributed on a one-by-one basis, which is the same problem of nation-state forced citizenship, disallowing voluntary community and voluntary membership. I believe this is why, to a large degree, taking the treaty/law route to freedom has been unsuccessful: it is appealing to an illegitimate authority (e.g. the Canadian or U.S. government) and speaking on behalf of many individuals (like a state constitution does) in a collectivized territory, which as I explained, is also ultimately illegitimate. Unanimous direct democracy (in which everyone voting agrees on the measure being passed) is a legitimate form of social-agreement, but only if a person can choose to not agree or participate. Not allowing that is assuming that those in positions of power in some organization (whether state or tribal) are automatically more virtuous than those that are not in those positions, and thereby deserve powers which the others don’t have; an assumption that is irrational and without historical basis. For example there are countless examples of tribal governance going against the will of members of the tribe (often in collusion with the U.S. government). Since this corruption can and does keep occurring, treaties can be a form of false representation. Additionally, people don’t always agree, an individual may find no group mandate which she or he is in complete agreement with, so there must be the option of not being part of any collective, of being an independent person.

And in order for that to be a possibility, one must have the option of having their own space, namely their own sovereign piece of land, so that they can live self-sufficiently. Tribes, majority rule and even direct democracy are really no better fundamentally than a dictatorship if there is no option to not participate and instead be a independent woman or man on this planet, not forced to agree with others, not forced to forfeit individual autonomy; to acquiesce and relinquish that unwillingly is really to be no more than a child, submitting to the commands of those playing the role of authoritarian parental overlords, and that’s not what society should be based on, it should be based on dignity and respect, for ourselves and others. Many tribal leaders do have the best interest of those in their community at heart, and they certainly should continue to be leaders in their community, the key is that it’s on a voluntary basis and that they have no “representative” power over those who did not agree to that arrangement.

~~~

Speaking of respecting the lives of others, many mistakenly think that hunting was historically the main means of tribal subsistence, and under-emphasize their skills as gatherers, and especially as horticulturists. Regardless, today with the almost complete decimation of wilderness and wildlife, we can’t all rely on hunting and gathering for survival, nor should we commit violence against other sentient species unnecessarily, that would be hypocritical for those advocating justice. It’s proven that animal-products aren’t needed for optimum health, so there’s really no ethically sound justification for enslaving and murdering sentient animals for food. Sometimes animal-based meals are associated with a cultural tradition, but violence and slavery are certainly never what makes any culture or tradition great; having vegan versions of varying cuisines is not a loss to that culture, but a gain. Claiming the murder of animals is essential to the beauty and distinctness of various cultures (which is found in their arts, languages, etc.) really doesn’t hold up to analysis, nor does claiming one’s culture is inseparable from the government alongside it. Governance (a.k.a. statism), like human carnism, is a tradition of violence and slavery that also doesn’t add to the beauty or uniqueness of various cultures (in fact governments support a corporate mono-culture that destroys cultural diversity).

“It has also been established that most traditional native economies were based in agriculture rather than hunting and gathering–a clear indication of a stationary, not nomadic, way of life–up until the European invasion dislocated the indigenous populations of North America.”

Therefore the way we can be in most in harmony with Nature, other species and each other, finally end tyranny, and live in true justice & equality, is through sovereign veganic homesteads, making up voluntary gift-economy communities. The restrictions of social-systems (land control, costs and taxation) won’t allow for that ideal way of life, and so that’s why we must reject systems of human farming altogether.

So yes, Occupy, but not to temporarily petition false masters to treat their slaves better, Occupy homesteading land permanently as sovereign humans to break away the chains to the lie of so-called “representative” democracy. Then we can unite and harmonize with the Earth, our true nurturing parent, and reject the false parental overlords who continue to deceive the masses into believing that they are better off with their “care.”

Urbanized Occupy activists need to remember the Earth beneath these concrete jungles, and they need to remember the indigenous societies that existed on that land for a long time before these unsustainable corporatist cities were built there. With ecology, sustainability, ethics, land and sovereignty as our main guideposts, we can move towards a truly intelligent, harmonious and principled way of living together on this amazing & beautiful planet.

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” – Albert Einstein

“Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.” – Malcolm X

There is a simple reason why those seeking a better society by engaging in activism to reform social-systems find themselves in an exercise of futility. The existing problems remain unsolved, or new problems from the same source take their place, and this is not accidental. In order to discover the Natural Law in operation that makes sense of this reoccuring phenomenon one must look deeper into our social and historical reality, through the political & mass-media theater, to what is happening beneath the surface concerning truth and principle.

This is just like with human psychology: if someone had experienced something traumatic as a child and the event was suppressed within their subconscious, it will most likely operate as the originator of destructive & fearful (or at the very least unproductive) behavior, and until that deeper issue is resolved, treating the symptoms of the behavior through medication and so on will never bring about a real cure; the irrational negative concept and belief created alongside the trauma must be rooted out in order for there to be real progress. Back to the social realm, we have all in a sense been subjected to a systemic trauma early on in our lives, actually it was already waiting for us before we were born: the trauma of being forced to assimilate to unnatural social-systems. These social-systems drastically shape our lives every day, and indoctrinate us with the belief that they are beneficial, that we need them for our survival, and so are therefore principled. We are also indoctrinated to accept the self-concept that we are “citizens,” rather than sovereign humans, and to accept that there is no choice in the matter. And just like within the personal realm, these irrational root beliefs and self-concepts create fearful & destructive behavior, except on a much larger scale.

The simple reason the political process is unproductive in producing lasting peace & justice is that it is fundamentally unprincipled; it is based on aggression and exploitation, which are in turn supported by lies, and you can’t build a principled society on a foundation of violence and lies. The unprincipled root at the foundation of social-systems will always create disturbing effects, over and over, year after year (like nonviolent men being choked to death by police on the sidewalk for not paying cigarette taxes). We will never see a truly just and free society using a process and system that is fundamentally unjust; world peace & justice will remain allusive, and fear and destruction will remain widespread, until this crucial truth is recognized by humanity. To ignore the root problem is to ensure the continuance of negative consequences that stem from it; constantly fighting against those consequences rather than their origin can never lead to lasting progress, more of the same negatives will karmicly follow; if you only treat the symptoms of a disease you will never be fully cured. So when we get upset at a corrupt politician, or some uncaring CEO, we aren’t really being effective activists. These powers-that-be are just inevitable virulent products coming from a social factory that’s origin is completely unethical. Yelling at the output is like yelling at toxic products coming out on a conveyor belt, it’s short-sighted and a waste of energy; we need to shut down the factory, we need to eliminate the unprincipled social-system that is the real root problem that needs to be completely abandoned, rather than reformed; you can’t make evil good, it’s a Natural Law.

Yet people may cite the existence of nuclear weapons, terrorism, poverty/hunger or industrial destruction of the environment as reasons for why we need government, but this misses the fact that government is the main means by which all of those came into being (unnatural centralization and accumulation of wealth/power/resources that allows for nuclear weapon development, etc., along with supporting the condition of monetary-slavery via taxation and other mandatory governmental fees that set up dependency on corporate goods, profit from which allows those industries to grow to immense and even more destructive size). The key simple thing here to understand is this: the government is an evil because it’s a form of slavery. And to think we need evil to combat evil is a fallacy; evil only combats good, that’s what makes it evil! This gray-area moral-relativism and compromise that is considered the more “realistic” and “rational” approach (compared with the “wishful thinking” of anarchist perspective) is actually neither realistic nor rational; it’s irrational delusion, it’s the true wishful thinking, wishful thinking that good can come from slavery. Calling on evil to combat evil is completely unproductive; most people would probably agree with that, but they don’t agree that government is an evil, they would say “It’s not that simple, government does good things too, like provide education and public services.” This perspective, again thought to be the more realistic and rational perspective, is actually ignorant of the reality. If someone was physically enslaving people, but also provided them with some services and education, like say what occurs in prisons, would that make the slavery “neither good or evil?” No, it would still be evil; any form of slavery is an evil. This is why the overall effect of statism will always be negative, it can never escape the Karmic Law connected to its foundation of aggression and slavery. This is why “progress” through modernized technological social-systems is a myth, though many are blind to it because they don’t know about or pay attention to the indicators that things are actually getting yet worse, not better.

The Myth of Progress

As the world is filled with more and more toxic chemicals, how can we call that progress? We may not see the same blatant examples of injustice as existed in the past, but that doesn’t mean things have necessarily gotten better, they can actually be worse. Increased cancer, autism, mental problems… smart-meters on people’s homes bombarding them with intense radiation daily, the 5G upgrade/intensification of radiation everywhere, aggression of privacy invasion becoming ubiquitous, (e.g., via “smart” devices” and surveillance cameras filling in more and more niches of the world and our lives… more state-sponsored terrorism, propaganda in almost all movies and TV shows, people drugged-up on pharmaceuticals more and more)… less personal freedoms (e.g., mandatory vaccinations, which can irreparably harm yourself and your children, mandatory state schooling/homeschooling outlawed, increased state gun control/confiscation, etc. ),.. artificial intelligence drones that seek out and kill whoever is deemed a threat, nanotechnology than can invade people’s bodies without them knowing… I could go on (GMO contamination of natural world and food supply), but the point is that the world is actually becoming more of a dystopia than it was before, and now it’s even less clear to most people what’s wrong than it was before, so there may be less chance of it changing (another level of how it’s actually worse).

If you look at the big picture, giving loving attention to all of Reality rather than just some narrow and irrational focus (e.g. “what about roads?”), then you can see that we can have all the good that society needs without any of the bad. If most of humanity understood and embraced this one crucial point centuries of massive destruction and suffering could have been avoided, and we could stop the apocalyptic trajectory that modern statism is taking humanity and the rest of life on Earth today. Good-intentioned people that support statism are some combination of ignorant and in denial; they are ignorant of the deplorable reality brought by social-systems, historically and today, and in denial that these systems are actually a form of slavery, even though they fit the very definition of slavery exactly.

Political reformers don’t yet understand this and say the fundamental flaw is lack of democracy, that if we could just “take back the power” from the corporations, or the crown, or the federal reserve, or whoever, then we could have a better world. There is truth to that of course, what we see growing around us is fascist globalization of power, and so it makes sense that its opposite, democratic localization of power, would be the solution to that problem.

This reasoning is not taken to its logical conclusion by reformers however; if it were, if we were to take the ideal of democratic localization to its most pure form, we would be left with no social-system at all, we would be left with sovereign families not subject to any outside human authority. And that’s anarchy, which the reformer believes equates to chaos (due to propaganda exposure), so that’s not a preferable option in their mind. Therefore the conclusion of this pro-democracy reasoning is that the solution is simply a social-system that is more democratic than the one we currently have. They may even call it, like I used to, a “true” democracy: the ideal social-system, the best that human civilization can achieve.

The Myth of Representation

Democracy, defined as government “by the people,” either directly or through representatives, is certainly a better model than a fascist dictatorship, no doubt. The problem with this model is that it’s actually impossible to maintain on a large scale. In fact it can’t be maintained on a moderate, or even regional scale. Take for instance, the largest protests in American and world history in February 2003, those against the proposed invasion of Iraq by the U.S. Military. Polls at the time confirmed the obvious: the majority of Americans were against this invasion; millions marched, and millions more wrote and called their representatives telling them not to go ahead with this violent plan. None of it stopped the invasion; hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed, including countless babies born dead or deformed from radiation poisoning caused by the depleted uranium weaponry used. And why did this horror occur despite the public outcry? Lack of democracy, yes, but if we had simply had more democracy (like through paper ballots, instant run-off voting, public financing, etc.) would that prevent the possibility of government officials making unpopular and destructive decisions, like illegally invading other nations? Well, they don’t take national polls before making every decision now do they? How could they? Isn’t that an impossibility? Since that is the case, every few years a few politicians we are allowed to choose from tell us what they will do when they are in office, we get an idea of their outlook on many issues, and then we may vote for the one we think is the lesser of the evils, and hope they will keep their word. News-flash: they often don’t keep their word. The list of broken campaign promises by politicians is endless. On top of the problem of deception and betrayal, this example is assuming you vote for the winning candidate; if you vote for the candidate that loses, or you find no candidate you want to vote for, you are even more obviously not being represented.

“We frequently hear the refrain: If you don’t vote you have no right to complain. Such an argument makes the false assumption that an election provides real choices. And, of course, it falsely assumes the legitimacy of the process itself: that an individual is required to delegate authority to an arbitrarily chosen few, or that an individual is required to elect his own jailers.”

– People Without Governments: An Anthropology of Anarchy by Harold Barclay, p. 118

And also since you have to be rich to afford the costs of being a viable candidate, the lie of representation is further exemplified by the upper class always being presented as representatives of the lower class and poor that live lives and have perspectives and interests nothing like theirs. Additionally, since voter turn-out is usually only an undersized percentage of the population, how can we possibly say those votes represent the wishes of everyone the policies and laws will effect? And so for all these reasons we must conclude that this is not real representation, nor could it ever be. Representation is fundamentally a lie, it is a technical impossibility. The well known saying “No taxation without representation” is a good one, but since representation is not really possible, that means we should have no taxation. This truth is not looked at by reformers, the blinders of indoctrination keeping the focus straight ahead on a delusional social dream. They believe, as I used to, that “if just more people participated in the political process” then we could have proper representation of the public by government. Reformers therefore see anarchism as the worst idea for attaining social-justice, and they look upon anarchists, as I used to, as immoral and ignorant. This perspective is not based in reality however. The truth about who is ultimately supporting immorality and ignorance turns out to be the opposite.

During the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi leaders one of the Nazis (Herman Göring) actually admitted the truth that all social-systems are corrupt and immoral, and that representation is a lie, whether called “democracy” or not:

Goring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Interviewer: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. Goring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

— published in Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary, (1947)

The whole premise of representation of the masses is a sham. The truth is we are all forced to obey the few, no matter what our personal views are. In the U.S.A. we are somewhat protected by the Bill of Rights, which was created to protect us from extreme governmental abuse, but of course those rights are still violated regularly, and they don’t give us real freedom: the fundamental right to be left alone, to not be attacked in any way or forced to do anything against our will. The prime example of this tyranny is facing arrest if you try to live naturally and freely on the land without paying taxes for things you don’t want, and without paying for a fair share of land & water, which should be a free birthright. The story remains the same, just as with the countless old tales of poor villagers being harassed, threatened or worse by tax collectors; today’s reality is only modernized and more propagandized.

The original colonies of the United States represented the rich land-owning class, and that’s still basically what the U.S. government, and other governments, in fact represent, even more so now in this time of corporate land grabs across the globe. Corporate and governmental domination work hand-in-hand to undermine natural community; that is their main function, to restrict your right relationship to the Earth, thereby making you exploitable money-slaves. Government and corporate/industrial power are really one and the same, this supposed battle between the two is really just theater to keep you complacent, to keep you in subservience, ignorant of the fundamental injustice in operation.

~~~

False Revolutions

Today the word “revolution” is thrown around quite a bit, in advertisements for everything from beauty products to automobiles, as well as in political discourse, but even then the term is watered-down to represent events that aren’t really revolutionary. The word is misused to misguide the populace as to what a true revolution would be, lowering their standards to mere mass-demonstrations. I’m not against mass-demonstrations at all, but I am against the exaggeration that they are revolutions. The electronic social-media supported demonstrations that occurred in 2011 in Egypt are now referred to as the “Egyptian Revolution,” but was it really? The sobering reality is that it was hardly that, as we can now clearly see. While it was occurring I corrected some commentators on this, telling them that unless the demonstrators were claiming sovereign homesteading land, it would ultimately amount to little, but I was disregarded as “overly negative” (which was irrational and untrue). Now they say “the revolution was hijacked by the elite.” Yet, the “revolution” was never really “hijacked” because it was never a real revolution to begin with, the elite never lost their base of power, which is land control, cost and taxation.

During the 1960’s radical movement in the U.S., the word revolution was often used as well, but the status-quo remained and grew because that crucial truth did not take center-stage. Some did go in the right direction however, like those that were part of the large back-to-the-land movement of that time, but most of these attempts did not acknowledge the insurmountable problems with communal living (i.e. lack of personal & land sovereignty) along with land cost, control and taxation (i.e. monetary-slavery), and so were mostly doomed to failure. A 60’s Hippie laments decades later:

“The word radical, like its etymological counterpart radicle, comes from the Latin word radix, which means root. So were we truly radicals? Did our roots go down into a life-giving source that could sustain us and bring about the goals of the Movement? No! Time and time again we went home dismayed and frustrated–our efforts to organize peace coalitions had come to nothing and the peace groups we belonged to had divided into warring factions. Eventually we left the Movement and fell back into the same system from which we had tried to escape.“

There were some successes however, like the formation of People’s Park in Berkeley, California, in which the local community claimed the land as their birthright (facing strong opposition from authorities for years), planted gardens, and successfully resisted the violence of the government and university officials using police which repeatedly tried to evict them. Overall though the critical importance of the land was missed by the 60’s radicals; the activists were still petitioning false masters, believing in the false ideals of “democracy” & “representation”, along with being largely inundated with drug use, which served as a distraction (albeit a sometimes inspiring distraction) from the real work that needed to be done, namely claiming land. Again, Hippie lamentations:

“We wanted to conquer the world with love and bring peace to this earth, but there was no blueprint to bring our vision into a lasting demonstration.”

But they were very right in emphasizing Love & Freedom as core principles of life, they just didn’t understand what those principles would manifest as comprehensively (i.e. the most loving (e.g. nonviolent toward animals and ecosystem) and freedom-respecting (e.g. recognizing personal sovereignty) social-structure is the “blueprint” of sovereign veganic homesteads, making up voluntary communities).

The famous philosopher Georg Hegel supported the French Revolution (1789-1799), while seeing its “Reign of Terror” (1793-1794), and later emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule (1804-1815), as an inevitable consequence of the fact that it didn’t manifest true equality. But he also thought that in order for a society to function well there must be judges, legislators and executives, there must be a State. Hegel thought the main short-coming of the French Revolution was its inability to conceive of a notion of equality that could coincide with the “necessity” of the State. No such notion was found then, nor has it yet been found, because none exists! To base a society on a system that is fundamentally unequal (statist representation is always an authoritarian lie), and expect to actually develop and maintain social equality, and avoid tyranny and State terrorism, is to be caught up in a delusion, it’s to have fallen for a Big Lie, the lie that statism is necessary and legitimate.

The Mexican revolution (1910-1920), as said in a recent article“Indigenous Communities in Mexico Unite to Protect Ancestral Lands,” “was fought under the rallying cry, Tierra y Libertad—“Land and Liberty.” At the end of the war in the 1920s, the victors began a massive land redistribution program, giving away large tracts of land to be farmed communally by poor Mexicans who had previously worked practically as slaves in vast haciendas. Finally, these farmers could work together to produce food autonomously for themselves and their communities,” but, as the renewed struggle highlighted in the article makes clear, didn’t last. And why not? Because they were still enabling a State, that’s why! This deplorable shit of corruption and destruction (destruction now accelerated through modern technology) is inevitable with that evil slavery foundation, yet activists around the world, for centuries now, keep falling for the same aforementioned Big Lie of statism.

The Spanish Revolution starting in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War likewise was based on some right principles, and in many ways manifested them to a greater degree than most other revolutionary movements; a popular movie about the Revolution was also significantly called “Land and Freedom,” again encapsulating the Right Revolution in three words! (Except they don’t include the crucial detail of sovereign homesteading land, and real freedom, i.e., anarchism, instead still believing in socialism).

“Land and Freedom… recreating a momentous experiment in social revolution that, almost succeeding, found an authoritarian left [the Communists] to be as much a hindrance as outright Fascism [the forces of Francisco Franco].”

– Anarchism (Reaktion Books, 2003) by Sean M. Sheehan, p. 95

Yet those principles of land equality and individual freedom weren’t followed fully, and so there were predictably disappointing results. By not focusing on land as a birthright of all and individual sovereignty as paramount, and not being wholly anarchist but instead largely “libertarian-communist”; this collectivist/statist ideology, like any collectivist view, isn’t truly revolutionary, denying the sovereignty of individuals, thereby associating itself with tyranny. The betrayal of the Spanish anarchist militia by the Communists, who were supposed to be fighting against fascism side-by-side with them, shows us again that real freedom (anarchism) and forms of slavery (e.g. Communism) can’t mix; they are ultimately diametrically opposed; the betrayal would have never happened if the Communists weren’t given so much direct support and affiliated with in the first place. (The same basically goes for the Russian anarchists who were heavily suppressed by the rising Bolshevik Communists in the 1917 Russian Revolution.) Because of their largely collectivist-industrialist doctrine that was an unstable mix of anarchism and communism, the Spanish revolutionaries didn’t each have the sovereign homesteading land to stand as a model in stark contrast against the visions of the Communists and Franco’s fascism. In a way this actually made it easier for their collective land and factories to be re-owned by another collective, the new fascist government of Franco, because their ideologies were not distinctly opposing; the revolutionaries were actually unknowingly partly in collaboration with the greater collectivist system (the State) via the correlation of their ideologies. They were taking part in the very evil which they were fighting against, and so lasting success was actually an impossibility. To think that private property of any kind is unjust is false; the truth of the matter is that if you don’t have any private property, that can actually make you a slave of other people: your body needs to be respected as your private property; your home and homesteading land needs to be respected as your private property; what you need for your survival needs to be respected as your private property. Otherwise your life is in the hands (and control) of others, and like I keep saying, that isn’t a sound foundation for harmonious communities. The idea of private property that includes the “right” to take more than your fair share of land & water, is immoral; you would then actually be stealing from others, taking something that was given by Nature/God and keeping it from others who have a right to it just like you do. The natural harmony that comes between people voluntarily, when slavery and aggression are absent is indeed a beautiful and real thing, however the anarcho-capitalist “free market” perspective accepts the unjust societal condition of land and water inequality upon which exploitation and oppression are based, it is a accepting a form of aggression and slavery, another form of rulership, so it’s really not “anarcho” (no rulers) as it claims to be. They are simply believing that removing the aggression and slavery of government is enough, but it’s not, they are not acknowledging the evil that would still remain without sovereign land & water being a birthright of all, and no one having the right to own more than that. It’s incredible to me when people object to this truth and talk about “giving” land and water to the poor who “may not know what do with it” or “how to take care of it”, etc. First of all land & water are not yours to give, if they were given by anybody, they were given by the Creator. Secondly, this elitist stance of “the poor are too ignorant” is the same immoral and superiority-complex mindset that totalitarianism is based on; again, activists and political commentators are often really taking part in the very evil that they claim to deplore.

Statism is naive, not anarchism

Although States may claim their goal is to “give to each according to his needs,” that’s never how it actually works out because the hierarchy of the State requires taking that what the people really need: freedom and sovereign land. So the idea that the State is engaged in some benevolent program of generosity is self-contradictory ideology, it’s a lie.

“The object of anarchism, on the other hand, is to extend the principle of equity until it altogether supersedes statutory law.”

Real universal justice and equity must be made the basis for society; not law-making institutions with a monopoly on violence that violate the higher natural/moral Law immediately, in the name of upholding morality. Are you starting to see the crucial importance of ethical consistency? Are you starting to see that trying to establish more peace and freedom via more violence and slavery can’t work? And when I say “can’t work” I don’t just mean that on an emotional level if that’s what you’re currently thinking, I mean that technically; slavery. does. not. work. Our reality actually has some integrity to it, just as there are laws of physics there are laws of morality and functionality; freedom and slavery are not compatible just as oil and water are not; we keep trying differing varieties of oil (different types of Statism) and mixing it up with water (the Natural World) over and over again, and the oil just keeps on “separating”, the social-systems just keep on going against what’s good and natural.

Back to the context of the Spanish Revolution, it may seem safer to collectivize land and communities (rather than having voluntary coalitions of sovereign homesteads) when facing opposition from the State, the rich and other controller/dominators, but this doesn’t actually turn out to be true in the long (or even short) run.

“[F]acing the task of confronting Franco’s forces while maintaining the rural collectives and other economic advances in the face of opposition from Communists and right-wing socialists, it is arguable that anarchists showed themselves to be flexible without self-destructing. … [It’s] a soul-searching dilemma for anarchists over whether to dilute fundamental principles on the grounds of a tactical postponement. It is, essentially, the same kind of rationale used by centralized parties of the left when appealing for votes, with the conservative opposition playing the role of the common enemy. Many socialists succumb to the same old dilemma when, knowing in their hearts that the politicians they elect will probably betray them, they still cast votes in their support, forlornly hoping that something good may come of it or that a slightly left-of-center government is better than a right-of-center one.” – Ibid., p. 96-97

This hope is misplaced. They were fundamentally still playing the same game as the fascists they opposed, an unnatural game that’s fixed toward tyranny, being that it’s based on the injustice of denying individual sovereignty. The movement was also engaged in offensive violence and militarism rather than defending the birthright of all women and men, which also planted the seeds of the revolution’s failure (aggression is part of the dominator paradigm). On the bright side they did demonstrate Stateless cooperation of individuals for a better world, and I’ve heard a plant-based diet was also widely promoted and practiced by those revolutionaries, along with the practice of nudism and domination-free relationships (just like the American “Hippies” did), all of which are in-line with a truly natural and free society. But because their philosophy was flawed in a critical way their movement was mostly absorbed back into the system, just like what happened with the 60’s movement decades later in “The Land of the Free”.

The anarchist movement in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 was similarly undermined within by their mix of communism and anarchist philosophy, though this quote, like the Spanish revolutionary cry of “Land and Freedom!,” was right on-target:

“The people themselves–the hungry and disinherited–are they who must abolish misery, by taking into possession, as the very first step, the land which by natural right, should not be monopolized by a few but must be the property of every human being.”

The Right Revolution (i.e. one that would be truly revolutionary) would be comprehensively nonviolent, egalitarian (acknowledging everyone’s birthright to a fair share of land & water), and in tune with human and planetary nature (veganic); it is the way that has only been tried in part and only for short periods as far as I know, the crucial truths that support it still not fully grasped by most who strive to bring revolutionary positive change to the world.

The present-day Egyptian demonstrators have missed these same crucial truths, so just like mass demonstrations that have occurred in North, Central & South America and elsewhere through recent decades, their end positive effect was little to nothing on the systemic level (though the increased dissent and community solidarity that have occurred are very good nonetheless).

Disempowered Humanity

The so-called elite let us “participate,” like let us hold big demonstrations and marches, but this is allowed because it is key to successful management of the masses, to give those under control the sense that they have real power too. These outlets of participation, like voting and demonstrating, actually do nothing to alter the technocracy substantially (though again I’m not against demonstrating or petitioning altogether, they do raise awareness and show dissent which are very good). But let us ponder, fundamentally why do we demonstrate? Why do we vote? Because people in positions of power are doing things we disagree with, and since we are in a position of powerlessness, we must resort to begging (e.g. petitioning, voting, demonstrating) that they stop doing those things, because we have no control of what our labor contributes to (i.e. what our tax dollars are used for). We send letters to our “representatives,” saying things like “Please don’t allow this corporation to destroy this natural area”, “Please stop killing women and children in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan” or “Please don’t let this corporation contaminate our whole food supply with GMO’s,” and even if the local politician her/himself happens to be an ethical individual that somehow temporarily got in office (like the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota) and agrees with you, there is little they can do since the system itself is there to protect and serve corporate interest, not the public interest. It is the social-system itself that is in control, the restrictive structure we are forced to live within, not “the people”, not even politicians. Ultimately we have lost control of our destinies by this system, we have lost the means to a dignified, natural and free life on this planet.

“Democracy, the destin’d conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere, And death and infidelity at every step.”

– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

This is why the American Revolution (1765-1783), which many libertarian and even anarchist activists romanticize (along with romanticizing the “Founding Fathers”), eventually led to a new empire, to new tyranny, not dissimilar to the British Empire which it was fighting against. This revolution, even with its declarations of equality and rights for the masses, was fundamentally just the replacement of one ruling class by another, the recycling of a social-system that was still at its base a system of slavery. The Republic turned into another Empire because both systems were on the same ideological spectrum, they are not polar opposites as many wrongly believe and claim. And because those systems shared the same slavery-foundation, it was only a matter of time before the political train on that track moved back toward more tyranny; that is the inclination of the track, it is already pointing downward (because of its coercive violation of individual sovereignty and the birthright of those individuals) at its origination, and the “gravity” in this analogy is karmic law concerning slavery, i.e. you can’t have a society of true justice, equality and peace that’s based on the very antithesis of all those principles, slavery.

And so what can the citizen-activist really do trying to reform such a system? Spend every free minute of her life trying to counter the evils of statism/corporatism that karmically just keep on coming? Is that the ideal for humanity? Is that realizing one’s full potential as a human on the Earth? It is rather a prescription for burnout and depression. Though much activism, from gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to some forms of direct action, are very commendable, if it doesn’t address the root problem/cause, which is the system as a whole, it will always be ultimately unsuccessful; the system will inevitably keep producing the destruction and tyranny that is being protested against. Actions like blocking a road used for logging or transporting toxic waste are good, but their impact is obviously very limited, usually business returns to usual shortly thereafter. Also a General Strike can also have some impact and is going in the right direction, but it doesn’t undue to the root problem: monetary/job-dependance and being denied your individual sovereign birthright to homesteading land, water & seed. We need a Continuous Strike, we need to be able to disconnect from this exploitative social-structure for good, through self/community-sufficiency. In addition, activists “fighting the system” cannot even address all of the bad things that governance does, since we of course don’t, and can’t, know all of the bad things they do (i.e. “black-budget projects”). Though some of the worst is known: CIA terrorism, School of the Americas training and funding the most evil torture and killing of women and children imaginable, as has been documented happening in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, etc.. One could spend a lifetime researching, documenting and trying to educate others about all of it, which still continues on, and that would be a life of great integrity, no doubt. But if we really want to end these sickening acts we need to recognize that all this evil has the same root cause (social-systems which concentrate immense power in the hands of the few, who inevitably commit atrocities with that power), and that the right strategy isn’t to fight these systems, but to reject and abandon them through mass non-compliance and independent natural living. The reason these activists don’t see much (or any) fruit for their labors is because they are not employing the right strategy; they are missing that claiming our birthright to our fair share of the land & water is the only truly effective action against the military-industrial-complex social-system of control and destruction.

“Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.”

– John Dalberg-Acton (1887)

The Real Solution

The only way to remove the structural capacity for this unnatural power, authoritarianism, fascism and war (i.e. mass-violence in its many forms) is to end our support for social-systems and establish sovereign homesteads, making up voluntary communities. This may seem like an odd solution to the reformer, but it would not seem that odd to the Indigenous peoples and rural “poor” of the world, who know very well the crucial importance of having a personal connection with the land in order to be free from exploitation and tyranny. We must embrace the true root solution (becoming free and natural women & men of the Earth), in order to effect true and lasting positive change. And because there are systemic restraints to achieving that ultimate localization and sovereignty (namely land cost, control & taxation), the system itself needs to be rejected.

A healthy society based on inequity and force, like the idea of a healthy and sustainable city, is an oxymoron. There is a lot of talk nowadays of “greening” cities, but the fundamentals are not changed: cities require the importation of resources, create landfills of toxic waste and massive amounts of very harmful (e.g. causes cancer) air and water pollution, along with highly disturbing light and noise pollution; veganic homesteads can be zero-waste and produce little to none of those pollutants. Cities, like governance, have directly caused incalculable amounts of environmental and health destruction; it’s time we stop trying to “green” something that is inherently toxic. Governments and cities are actually intrinsically linked with one another, just as governments and war are co-dependent:

“Urban reality is primarily about trade and commerce, with a nearly total dependence on support from external areas for continued existence. To guarantee such an artificial subsistence, city fathers turn inevitably to war, that chronic civilizational staple.”

– John Zerzan, from his book Twilight of the Machines, p. 41

Cities disallow a natural lifestyle living off the land, they disallow individual sovereignty, privacy and true freedom, and so they are perfectly complimentary to social-systems. Social-systems and the cities they create are unnatural control-grids, they constitute intensive farming, of humans. This is clearly seen with the cruel and tyrannical criminalization of sleep; homeless people are often harassed by police just for sleeping in a public place, even though they are disturbing no one. I have seen this first-hand many times at the public library, wherein a homeless person has fallen quietly asleep in front of their book at a nearly empty large table, and a security guard always comes by and wakes them up! As long as your eyes are open you can stay, but god forbid you should rest, or meditate for a short while! This despotic control of natural life takes on many other forms too, like cops and security guards knocking on your window if you fall asleep in an empty parking lot in your car, etc. Not being an active consumer, not paying someone for your time on this planet, is criminalized, just as sharing food with your neighbors has been criminalized. We can’t have people sharing now can we? There’s no corporate profit in that!

Modern technology too goes hand-in-hand with this control-culture; it is the main tool of modern governance, using it for invasive surveillance and personal data collection. And of course the latest tech always goes to the development of various forms of weaponry first; that is the priority of its use: violence, not aid. It is also the main tool of industries that are destroying our environment through intensive resource extraction (clear-cutting forests, massive mining operations, over-fishing, etc.).

“We cannot have fast cars, computers the size of credit cards, and modern conveniences, while simultaneously having clean air, abundant rainforests, fresh drinking water, and a stable climate. This generation can have one or the other, but not both. Humanity must make a choice. … Gadgetry or nature? Pick the wrong one and the next generation may have neither.”

– Mark Boyle, The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, p. 196

This unnatural combination of social-systems, cities, and modern technology keeps us from realizing a natural synergy of natural-freedom, natural-living and natural-community.

~~~

Some denounce agriculture and call it the root of all of our social problems, and yes, large-scale agriculture does coincide with hierarchy, the accumulation of wealth in few hands, environmental destruction, etc. but it is not the root source of those problems. The key word is large–scale agriculture; how did there get to be such huge farms in the first place? Control of the land by the few is what allows for it; unjust monopolization of land and water, though denying people their birthright to sovereign land. Today this is inequality is made even worse via government subsidies to large agribusiness corporations, furthering the unjust socioeconomic imbalance. This is the real source of all those aforementioned problems; to think agriculture should be altogether abandoned ignores the existence of sustainable localized agriculture, i.e. veganic homesteading horticulture/permaculture.

Anti-agriculture voices seem to think hunting & gathering is a viable solution, but it’s clearly not, for multiple reasons; firstly murdering animals when we don’t need to is uncaring, and depleting the little that remains of wildness is also immoral; secondly there is not enough public lands with enough wildlife and edible plants to sustain the world population anyway; thirdly, even if there was enough animals to kill and plants to forage, where will these wandering hunter & gathers do such activity? Wont they end up in competition with other wandering tribes over the same territory? Doesn’t this competition inevitably lead to war? Human subsistence that violently departs from community cooperation/solidarity and respect for other sentient life is linked to greater social and ecological disharmony; I believe this is no coincidence, rather it shows that there is a moral fabric to our reality, there is such a thing as Karmic/Natural Law.

Others say socialism is the answer, and that capitalism is the fundamental problem, but they seem to miss where capitalism comes from in the first place: social-systems, founded on the true root injustice: land control (i.e. land cost & monopolization of ownership, zoning restrictions, permitting restrictions, etc.) and monetary-slavery (mainly via taxation). Socialists believe that if they elect socialist politicians they can create a just world, and though it might be better in some ways than what we have now, ignoring the faults of all social-systems and the falsehood and violence of “representation”, makes this perspective and strategy a failure from the start. Focusing on single issues, like employment, more government funding of social programs, ending the drug war, etc. is well-intentioned, but this strategy has two major flaws: 1) It ignores the root of all of those problems, namely social-systems based on land control and monetary-slavery (e.g. we wouldn’t need jobs if we had our share of land, nor would we be restricted from growing valuable crops like industrial hemp if there was no governance), and 2) It believes that social-systems of true representation can exist, and that social-systems of control are necessary and good, when in fact they are unnecessary and unprincipled. Social-systems, even socialist ones, have the seeds of concentrated power within them. In the excellent essay “Anarchism: Against Capitalism, Against Socialism” by Chris Wilson, he says:

“Socialists should consider the possibility that the proposed command structure of socialism might possess certain inherent properties that necessarily lead to such ghastly forms of authoritarianism. Every attempt to realize socialism has always resulted in a totalitarian society in which the population is used as an expendable resource for the enrichment of a handful of elites. These failed attempts are a direct consequence of the innate hierarchy of socialist organization combined with a refusal to realize that power always corrupts, even when delegated democratically.”

Socialists also see the harmful “privatization” (i.e. corporate control) of public resources in many countries, usually encouraged or demanded by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization as just the fault of capitalism and lack of democracy as well. This perspective assumes that 1) if all the natural resources of the nation were under “public ownership” (i.e. government ownership) and 2) if all tax dollars were kept in the “public treasury” (i.e. centralized government control), for social programs like better health care, education and quality job-creation, then we could avoid the mass exploitation by globalist trans-national corporations which have increased poverty and environmental destruction in many “third world” countries. The first point on corporate control of natural resources, especially water, is in response to something that is of course extremely unjust and has led to increased corporate profits at the expense of people’s health and well-being. But simply giving the control back to the government is obviously no assurance that justice will prevail! The costs of living may have been temporarily lower under State control in some countries, but how do you think the corporate control/corruption happened in the first place? The fact that “public property” (like water and forests) keeps becoming corporate property goes to show that it never really did belong to “the people” in the first place. “Public ownership” sounds good, and would be good in the sense of everyone being entitled to their fair share of natural resources as sovereign individuals, but when said in the sense of governmental ownership it is supporting a social theory which is fundamentally flawed, since government is always subject to further corruption because it is an inherently corrupt and unjust social-structure. “Public property” and “public treasury” are lies, just as “representation” is. Which leads to the second point: eliminating social programs that may have been helping a lot of people in order for the government to pay back loans to the IMF and adhere to their “structural adjustments” has indeed led to further unnecessary suffering and a lower quality of life for countless millions of people, but because governments are inherently unprincipled, corrupt and unstable, because representation is a lie and cannot be made true, returning to full governmental control is absolutely no assurance of economic equality, stability and justice. When was it ever? There is no way to have harmony, equality, personal freedom or sovereignty in a mass-society, it is inherently unjust and thereby destructive, depending on force and enslavement to varying degree for its existence. (See also the essay “Against Mass Society” by Chris Wilson.)

“The revolutionary alternative to the status-quo today is not collectivized property administered by a “workers’ state”, whatever that means, but some kind of anarchist decentralization that will break up mass society into small communities where individuals can live together as variegated human beings instead of as impersonal units in the mass sum.”

– Dwight Macdonald, from his article Politics Past

Economists offer schemes as solutions too, and even the best among them, like the “Robin Hood Tax” (which would tax the financial sector more), and so-called “Sacred Economics” (which is basically just putting a negative interest rate on bank reserves), ignore the root problems of individuals being forced into monetary dependency and subservience to some outside imposed authority, and being denied their cost-free birthright (their fair share of land & water). It also ignores the fact that increasing taxation for the “public treasury” doesn’t equate to greater public wealth or quality of life, because representation is a lie. The website for the Robin Hood Tax says it can “raise hundreds of billions every year to provide funding for jobs to kickstart the economy and get America back on its feet. It could help save the social safety net in the US and around the world. Not complicated. Just brilliant.” But it’s really not brilliant; again ignoring the fact that just because the government gets more money doesn’t mean the poor will, and also ignoring why we need money, jobs and a governmental social-safety net in the first place: land control, cost and taxation. How is that more complicated or less brilliant?

Also more people are now advocating community land trusts, and that’s not a terrible idea at all, but it is really just another petition to the rich dominators of society; the common woman or man can’t actually make or afford these economic or legal changes themselves, so it amounts to more of begging “representatives” to be less evil and give up the natural resources they have stolen; this is not only an exercise in futility but is also sadly subservient and expresses a self-concept of citizen/subject rather than sovereign human. In a film on the injustice of real estate economics, the reformers exclaim: “We can change the way we are taxed!” Yes, hooray for less abrasive whips! This false solution is again just begging for better slavery, rather than rejecting it altogether, as we should and need to.

Others, called “economist heroes” by the corporate media, “help” the poor in the “undeveloped Third World” by setting them up with small businesses through small-loans. Is this “development”, this so-called progress, really in the best interest of these “less civilized” people? Of course many of the people receiving this assistance today are initially thankful for it; when they aren’t able to acquire sufficient food for themselves, and a few dollars is the only apparent means to get it, that’s very understandable. But they shouldn’t need money to survive in the first place, it is this unnatural social-system that corrupts their lives and makes that their reality. Those that currently live in “undeveloped” areas are those that haven’t been completely corrupted yet, their assimilation is currently incomplete, they still haven’t had all of their ancestral land taken from them, they still haven’t lost most of their natural skills and livelihood, accumulated debt, and so on. They can still live more naturally, their traditional culture is still somewhat intact; along with their natural resources, these people have not themselves been “developed” into profitable resources for the global economy (a.k.a. the global human farm), that’s where the so-called economic heroes come in to finish the job of assimilation.

~~~

The only way to have a significant increase in freedom and sustainability and have significantly greater equality and peace, is through individual sovereignty. That means you are a Woman of the Earth first, not the subject of a crown. That means you are a Man of the Earth first, not the citizen of a country. This does not mean that you wouldn’t have community available, you would actually have more of it. Techno-industrial mass-society is anti-community and anti-family; it fragments, divides and isolates us, destroying families and natural community and replacing them with shallow and artificial substitutes like nationalism, sport teams, and electronics. In a genuine community your relationships with your neighbors are not corrupted by monetary concerns, and your level of interaction with community is up to you, it’s completely voluntary, which further removes inter-personal friction that arises from unnatural social-systems.

You would live on your sovereign land, alone or with family (in whatever form that takes) that all wishes to be together, and then you would interact in a gift-economy cultural relationship with others as you choose. Your space would be private, your own “kingdom,” which means kins domain, or family land. This avoids the common problem of inter-personal friction that comes from lack of personal space/privacy along with forced communal decision-making that arises even in eco-villages, intentional communities or other collectives. Humans instinctively desire freedom, and one aspect of that is having your own space and privacy, and not being subject to communal-everything dynamics you’d rather not be a part of; this has been and continues to be the biggest problem at most intentional communities and collectives that is not recognized as such, and so people within that dynamic think “this is just the way life is.” But this is just another negative belief based on ignorance of the root problem. They deal with the constant inter-personal conflict and unnecessary drama because they think there is no other way, but there is: sovereign homesteads. What they’re experiencing can be thought of as karmic feedback for participating in something that is ultimately not natural or principled (even though of course it’s a lot more so than the typical corporate dynamic). What I’m pointing to is a way that harmonizes with our inner nature, as well outer nature: sovereign veganic homesteads, which minimize the disturbances we experience on both fronts drastically. These are truly kingdoms of heaven in that they lack all the problems that come from living in less ethical, natural and sustainable ways; everything else results in hellish instead of heavenly experience.

“Mahatma Gandhi was a champion of swadeshi, or home economy. … Gandhi’s vision of a free India was not of a nation-state but a confederation of self-governing, self-reliant, self-employed people living in village communities, deriving their right livelihood from the products of their homesteads. … The British believed in centralized, industrialized, and mechanized modes of production. Gandhi turned this principle on its head and envisioned a decentralized, homegrown, hand-crafted mode of production. In his words, “Not mass production, but production by the masses.”

– The Case Against the Global Economy and for a Turn Toward the Local, edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, p. 418-420

~~~

Since animal domestication and farming are also based on false beliefs (like that we need animal products for optimum health), and has also been a source of major disturbance (to put it very lightly, actually the leading cause of environmental and health destruction), as well as being the vehicle for the most massive violence humans participate in, it should also be rejected. Animal domestication was an unprincipled mistake by humanity, and until we end that practice it is unlikely we will escape domestication ourselves. In seeking freedom from domination and exploitation, it makes perfect sense to not do the same to other species, regardless of how “natural” it supposedly is. Taking “good care” of an animal up until the point you kill and eat it, is not ethical, it’s twisted. There is no such thing as “humane” murder or enslavement. The sound nutrition science and ethical principles of veganism should trump unprincipled tradition, so these private homesteads that ensure freedom for us should not be places of enslavement for other species, they should employ organic vegan agriculture. This avoids the ethical hypocrisy, as well as the environmental and health damage from synthetic chemicals and corporately-controlled Genetically Modified Organisms. The veganic component of sovereign homesteading further incorporates nonviolence into the model; not harming animals, humans or the environment is what makes a homestead, a kin’s domain (a.k.a. kingdom), heavenly, hence a true “kingdom of heaven.” You don’t have to be religious at all to agree that violence, toxins and slavery aren’t heavenly!

Another way the root of all the social, personal and ecological destruction that has been going on could be summed up as is: living out of harmony with Nature, through animal & human domestication. The human domestication and farming arises through the forcible restriction from living as free natural women and men on the Earth, mainly through land control/cost/taxation. This is the fundamental flaw of governance (and technological dependence), which has led to the Orwellian human-animal farm we now find ourselves within. Until we can become self/community-sufficient, we will remain dependent on governments and the corporations they serve, and we will continue to face the disturbances of living in an unnatural and unprincipled way. Even everyday disturbances of life can be perceived, with a more penetrating analysis, to be rooted in animal & human domestication as well; from foul smells of garbage, barking dogs, car alarms, construction and various machinery like leaf-blowers, to traffic jams you may drive in or plumes of exhaust you must breathe in if you’re walking or biking by them, to loud neighbors, annoying or abusive housemates you are forced to live with (because of monetary restraints), to other piercing sounds like near-continuous sirens from emergency vehicles in urban centers, it all originates in animal and human domestication, they would not exist without that domestication, they would not exist in free and natural veganic homesteads, well-spaced from one another, making up voluntary communities. Until we claim our birthright of sovereign land and start accepting the responsibility to live truly ethically as natural humans (growing our own food, producing our own fuel, building our own homes, etc.) we will continue to be disturbed money-slaves, and we will continue to beg for corporate jobs (or join the military), no matter how unsatisfying and exploitative, just to have the basics of food, clothing and shelter, all of which the Earth provides for free.

“Having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists.”

– Peter Kropotkin, from his book The Conquest of Bread

Why should our destiny be so much in the hands of others? Why can’t we have access to our fair share of natural resources that would enable us to break these chains of unjust subservience? Being denied the ability to live naturally and self-sufficiently is the root social-injustice, all others follow from it, this is the real front-line that activists (and anyone who cares about freedom and sustainability) should be focusing the most on. In the book Twelve by Twelve: A One Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream, the author tells of people in North Carolina living in homes that are only 12 feet long and wide because that is the maximum size allowed by the State before you have to pay various taxes, and install plumbing and electric lines. The State, being the partner of destructive and exploitative industry, has made it a requirement to have electricity, they force you to pay for something you may not want, just like with insurance; quoting one of the “poor” people trying to live off the grid: “Do you know it’s not legal to live without electricity in North Carolina? It’s not a choice you make. It’ll cost us a fortune. … What does it matter to them if we live simply?” (p. 223-4) He then cries out “Hell is other people!” in anguish over being forced to assimilate to a way of life he does not want to live or support, and also says that he tried communal living and it wasn’t for him either (or me, or countless others who have faced the aforementioned problems of that living situation), he just wanted to be left alone (i.e. not attacked by others through taxation, arrest, etc.) as he survived and thrived through his own natural labor. So what creates a hellish world for so many is not just “other people” (an obvious exaggeration and over-simplification), it is other people that force you to pay for your birthright, and it is the other people you are forced to be exposed to, lacking the privacy and space of that sovereign land, wherein who stays with you is your choice. What does it matter to State officials if you live simply? It matters a lot, though this fact is a great secret of the establishment. The State’s existence relies on people being assimilated to this system; if there was a loophole, like living in 12X12 houses, more and more people would do that, so even that is being eliminated; now they are told they can only live that way part of the year, not year-round; if you try and live very simply and naturally it is a crime, you face fines and arrest. So these peaceful people that want to live peaceful and good lives (in their own “kingdom of heaven”) need to return to being money-slaves, victims of the system, supporting industries and government that are opposed to their values. Sovereign veganic homesteads are the logical antidote to this tyranny, they are the cure for empire, establishing harmony between humans, Earth and all other species on this planet.

In the concluding “Getting There” chapter of his book Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, author Nick Rosen says: “[I]f off-the-grid building permits were easier to come by in more parts of America, hundreds of thousands would be allowed onto the property ladder, including many who have been in foreclosure or who are trapped in mortgages they cannot afford. … The solution could take the form of small, localized non-profit groups that take control of land and ensure that the original owners wishes are followed.” Some “solution!” Yes, if the government would just permit us to freely rise on their ladder of social-control! Why didn’t I think to just ask? Hang on while I call my “representative’s” office and leave a message, I’m sure they’ll give me the a-okay! And complying with the wishes of the original owners? What makes you think their wish won’t just be to keep their massive holdings of land? Why do many people (like this author) say the most remarkably stupid things when it comes to solutions within the system? Because there aren’t any, so they must resort to outright absurdity; you can’t be rational and principled while conforming your thought to irrational and unprincipled restraints. The author goes on to say the other two functions of these nonprofits (besides following the original owners wishes) would be “to introduce landowners to land seekers” and “to provide legal advice and help draft land-use agreements.” Again, this is more worthless nonsense, sorry Nick. Introduce land owners to land-seekers? Like “Hey, howya doin there Mr. Rich Land Owner, my family and I here are poor and would like some land”? And if that doesn’t work, one can always ask for legal advice! What a joke! And what might these “land-use agreements” entail? If you can’t afford to pay for the land (like most people can’t), then, if you’re lucky and Mr. Rich Land Owner is a nice man, he might say you can work for him! What a novel idea! You can grow food on his plantation, your wife can be his personal maid, and in exchange, he’ll give you some food and let you sleep in the barn! Now that’s justice!

I’ve actually had many people say very similar things to me when I expressed an interest to live naturally & freely, they’ve asked me “What about a work-exchange somewhere?” or “What about an intentional community?” My reply is: What about freedom? Why must I submit to false authority, collectivism, hierarchy, subservience, injustice, inequality and exploitation? Why must I be denied my sovereignty and my sovereign land to live on by my own natural labor? There are no good reasons why, and that’s why the world needs The Right Revolution. I’ve done several work-exchanges and lived in communal living situations, and those experiences, and the inevitable disturbances that come with them, just reinforced the truth that the true ideal, worth repeating a hundred times, is sovereign veganic homesteads, making up voluntary gift-economy communities.

~~~

If you were born on this planet then your fair share of the resources needed for your survival is your birthright, you are not bound to any contract you never signed, for services you never asked for. The spiraling ripples of discontent and destruction originate at this unprincipled point, it is karmic law in action. By sacrificing our right to live free and natural lives, for supposed greater security, we agree to the age old “Devil’s Bargain.” And how is that working out for most people? How is it working out for the ecosystem and other species? Stress is said to be the #1 reason people go to their doctor, so obviously we have not found personal peace in this exploitative and unnatural society, nor should we expect to.

“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”

– Malcolm X, from the book Malcolm X Speaks

And speaking of this contract we never signed, also known as a constitution, did the signers of the U.S. Constitution really have the power to contract for people other than themselves in any matter? Legally a contract can only bind those that sign it, so how does the U.S. Constitution (or any other Nation-State’s constitution) apply to anyone besides those who sign it? Could you write a valid contract that said everyone in your neighborhood has to give you a hundred dollars a week for some service they never asked for and never signed in agreement to? Of course not. And furthermore, could you make that contract binding on all their children, and their children’s children, going on forever? That would be laughed at wouldn’t it? Yet that’s the same thing as a constitution, it’s false authority manifest. We are told that the constitution protects our freedoms, but it violates our most fundamental freedom, to live as sovereign natural humans in harmony with the Earth (self-sufficiently & sustainably), by forcing us to pay taxes and submit to an unjust and fear-based tyrannical social-hierarchy.

On a simpler level, it comes down to government officials not lettings us be, they constantly invade our lives making demands upon us, they just won’t leave us alone. As Supreme Court Justice Lousi Brandeis said in 1928, “the right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rights and the the right most valued.” To not be “let alone” really means to be attacked in one form or another, for violence to be initiated against you. And that’s what government is, a group of people who won’t leave us alone, who say they have exclusive use of “justified” violence, supposedly because they only use it for good. Thousands of years ago Lao Tzu spoke to this same absurdity when, directed to government officials, he said “Act for the people’s benefit, leave them alone.” (Tao Te Ching, verse 75) Through propaganda indoctrination we receive starting from childhood, we are led to think that when the government initiates force, that’s not violence, just “the way society works”. Coupled with this denial of real violence, we are taught that when government forces people to do things (like pay taxes) it leads to a harmonious society. We are led to believe that this violence is good (along with all their military violence, etc.), but all other violence is bad. They can steal from and kill people and that’s okay, but if you do it, then that’s a crime.

A couple more examples of how they just won’t leave us alone:

Are we really free when one government official can declare a “mandatory evacuation” of our homes in the name of safety? Aren’t we being treated like children who can’t make decisions for ourselves? Government operates under a paternalistic superiority complex, because ultimately they consider you a child-pawn that they can move as they like on their grand chessboard, not a sovereign individual as you are.

Do we really have freedom of religion? What if I believe, as Thomas Jefferson & Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God,” and that all forms of involuntary government are forms of tyranny? What if I also believe that God wants me to not fund wars [how crazy a belief!], and wants me to be a proper custodian of Creation [extremism!] by living as sustainably as possible (i.e. veganic homesteading, using plants like industrial hemp for food, fiber, fuel and shelter)? Do I have the freedom to practice that religion? Nope! “Sorry”, say government officials, “you have freedom of religion, as long as it takes the authority and control of the State as a given; that way of life is against the law.” That’s quite a big caveat to my so-called freedom!

Government officials & enforcers claim they have a justified monopoly on controlling people (i.e. on violence), and many people (due to massive indoctrination) believe that this violence is indeed justified, they think that without it the world would be even more violent than it currently is. So this is giving approval for pre-emptive attacks, on everyone, all the time, in order to prevent the possibility of some other violence occurring at some other time. This unprincipled, irrational and deceptive premise of pre-emptive attack, of being treated guilty without any proof, is the evil seed that grows into monstrosities; I cannot overstate how important this point is! Pre-emptive attacks must be identified and rejected wherever they are found; acceptance of this evil is why we currently have a world of about 7 billion human slaves, and billions more animal slaves; it is the philosophical underpinning for tyranny. Government operates on the crazy notion that in order to be free we need slavery, and in order to protect us from violence they need to commit violence against us. This is what is all boils down to, the ideology of pre-emptive attack as legitimate, which it is not.

Here’s another way to think about this: If someone on the street was taking a survey and simply asked you “Do you think mass-violence can lead to a harmonious society?” You’d probably say “No”, as would most people, because it’s an absurd notion: mass-violence and harmony are not at all compatible, they are in fact opposites. So if you accept the fact that stealing from people against their will (e.g. taxation), making wars, violating peoples bodies at airports, supporting industries that are destroying our health and environment, etc. are all acts of violence, then why do you think that will lead to a harmonious society? Building on what I was saying in the opening paragraph, we must uproot that which is unprincipled, irrational and false, what I call the “toxic trio”, that always, in part or synergistically, constitutes the opposition, in the personal or social realm; look for them and you will begin to see these crucial elements at play, cutting through distraction & illusion. The healthy trio to base perspective and decisions on is its opposite: principle, rationality and truth, and that is what we need if we are to progress, personally and socially. The phrase “Give Peace A Chance” is popular, but it usually just refers to military wars based on lies, and misses that war/violence and lies are always close to home, even in “peace-time”, it is ongoing and against all of us (and the ecosystem); government never really gives peace a chance, just by its very existence.

“Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon itself.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, verse 30

~~~

Some may say: “If you don’t like this country than why don’t you just leave?” But this is a very short-sighted perspective since there is nowhere where human farms are not, they border one another across the globe, so there is nowhere to go; it is not a matter of leaving, it is a matter of staying wherever you and your family are and wish to be, and claiming your fair share of the currently unjustly controlled land as your human right to live sustainably on. Some might object to that as well saying: “What about the people that bought large amounts of land and worked hard to earn the money to do so, how is that fair to them?” A quote from Alexander Berkman’s book “What is Anarchism?” is a good beginning to a response:

“The first requirement of justice is equal liberty and opportunity. Under government and exploitation there can be neither equal liberty nor equal opportunity — hence all the evils and troubles of present-day society.”

We do not have equal liberty and opportunity when we don’t have equal access to the Earth’s resources, which should belong to everyone as a birthright for being human, irrespective of whatever country they are supposedly born into. The exploitation begins there, and then capitalism compounds the injustice through usury, unfair and highly disparate wage differences, inheritance originating in conquest, etc. So someone who has gained large amounts of land through these means have not really gained them fairly, and once they have more than their fair-share of land it becomes the theft of the birthright of others; therefore even if you had to work hard to attain those riches, it does not justify the continuation of that theft, denying others their birthright. All the land that is uncultivated or unjustly used (e.g., for livestock) and is kept as an investment by the rich, while millions have no place to live and are hungry, cannot be justified.

And even those that “earned” their land can be victimized by the system; if they can no longer afford rising property taxes the land would be seized from them as well. Moreover the government officials can at any time still claim the land for themselves as “eminent domain” or harass you with bogus “code violations”, charging you various fees and penalties until you are forced to sell the land. These actions are often taken when the land is wanted for new corporate development, and government serves that corporate interest through an unjust legal system; this is another example revealing again that ultimately the public and private sectors are really just one sector, the fascist sector.

For the majority of people on Earth, saving enough money to buy land, pay all the initial taxes, fees, etc. and then not have to do additional work besides their natural work to produce and maintain plant-food crops, plant-based clothing and plant/earth/stone-based shelter, is not a possibility. Unless you are ultra-rich, you will still need to earn money to pay for mortgages, property taxes, etc. and so therefore have not achieved freedom from the monetary system of control and exploitation, your life is still compromised and corrupted. Some system apologists might say: “Yeah people may need to earn some money on the side, maybe a small business, but whats wrong with that? They are earning their keep.” But this is where the corruption of the natural life begins (along with beginning of our discontent), having to sacrifice time that could be much better used towards things like creativity, spirituality and sharing pleasure; instead that time has to go towards earning money to appease other peoples conditions for living on the Earth.

The crucial thing that many people overlook is that social-systems initiate violence over us first, supposedly to protect us from violence. This is the fundamental philosophical premise that must be rejected; it is not okay to initiate force against people just because you say it is for their own good. That “goodness” can never be proven (and is disproved every day), therefore, nonviolence must take precedence. What is “good” after all? Isn’t nonaggression good and initiation of aggression bad? That’s the most basic morality, the universal ethic. We have been indoctrinated to accept a completely backwards morality, and we, along with other species and the ecosystem as a whole, are paying dearly for that acceptance.

Tellingly most people already do reject the premise that violence always prevents violence, i.e. the legitimacy of pre-emptive attacks, on the person-to-person level; for example, if someone told you they need to punch you in the face in order to help you overcome your cough, and that you have no choice about it, what would be your reaction? You’d probably think they were a crazy control-freak right? Yet most people believe the propaganda of governments telling them that they need to commit violence against them (force them to pay taxes and other fees for their natural birthright), for “their safety and well-being.” Meanwhile governance has been the #1 source of violence throughout history! Talk about a need for a wake-up call!

“Even outside war, in the 20th century alone, more than 270 million people were murdered by their governments. Compared to the few dozen murders committed by anarchists, it is hard to see how the fantasy of the “evil anarchist” could possibly be sustained when we compare the tiny pile of anarchist bodies to the virtual Everest of the dead heaped by governments in one century alone. Surely if we are concerned about violence, murder, theft and rape, we should focus on those who commit the most evils – political leaders – rather than those who oppose them, even misguidedly.” … “The statist looks at a population and sees an irrational and selfish horde that needs to be endlessly herded around at gunpoint – and yet looks at those who run the government as selfless, benevolent and saintly.” … “[We are led to believe] that these living man-gods [i.e. false idols] have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money – and nothing but good, plenty and virtue will result.”

– Stefan Molyneux, Everyday Anarchy

Anarchy is associated with destruction and violence, and yet nothing has been more destructive and violent than governments (and the corporations they foster); look at history! Look at current reality! Indoctrination blinds people to the root cause, knowledge of good and evil has been lost, and with it a more paradisaical world. Interestingly when I bring up the point of governments being the leading cause of mass violence, oftentimes people will agree partially saying “Yes, historically, but governments aren’t as bad as they used to be, they’ve evolved along with the rest of humanity.” First of all, “not as bad”? Is bringing the entire ecosystem to a point of collapse not as bad? Is developing weaponry that could be used intentionally or accidentally to turn the entire planet into a radioactive wasteland not as bad? Or creating a world-wide surveillance grid that corrupts human existence? Supporting health-destroying GMO corruption of the world’s food seeds? Militarized nanotechnology? Etc., etc., etc.? Things have actually gotten worse, as the amount of damage that governments and their corporate partners can now do (and are doing) is far greater than ever before in history. This belief that current government “isn’t that bad, it was all the previous ones that were so,” shows the power of indoctrination, the mind-control that creates the giant intellectual blind-spot of missing that the violence committed by government in the name of safety is wrong and unjustifiable, supports inevitable tyranny and atrocity, and can’t be evolved into something good. There is no way to improve slavery, it needs to be altogether abolished.

Fortunately there are growing numbers who see through this propaganda, but they also know that if they begin to practice noncompliance with this illegitimate social-system (i.e. stop paying taxes, fees. etc. and claim their birthright of sovereign homesteading land), they will likely be met with further violence (arrest/fines/imprisonment) and so they go along with the status-quo because they don’t want to face this, and that’s understandable. That’s why at least waking up others to this crucial truth about social-systems is imperative and our responsibility; when enough people no longer believe the lies upholding the system it will be severely undermined, it relies on its mask of morality, it relies on maintaining the mass-deception.

The fundamental issue that needs to be recognized is that there is no valid justification for why land & water should not be a human right, there is no principled reason for why we must pay some people called officials for their “services” and be automatically subjugated to citizenship (i.e. to be put under a form of slavery); the usual justification, “It’s for the greater good,” is just dogmatic opinion, (opposed by history and current reality) that does not take precedence over the fact that social-systems initiate violence on everyone every day, and one should be free and sovereign, not forced to obey life-restrictions via a social contract that they never signed. Slavery is not justifiable!

~~~

The massive world-wide problem of homelessness, hunger and starvation is really a problem of landlessness. Building or acquiring a modest natural home and planting seeds of vegetable, fruit and nut trees is not a major difficulty, the main problem is not having a piece of free land to do that on. People are homeless, hungry or starving not because they are incapable of building a natural shelter or creating a garden & orchard, they are simply restricted from living in that easier and natural way because of the monetary-slavery imposed on them by land control/cost and taxation.

We are led to believe by technocrats, politicians and the media that living off the land is more difficult than being a money-slave. The anthropological record shows otherwise, along with the testimony and demonstration of people today who have abundant homestead gardens and orchards: they actually have more free time than those needing money to purchase the things the earth provides for free. What changes this is monetary slavery, the need to pay taxes and land costs, so that if one looks at the hard life of modern farmers they don’t take that into consideration, even though that is what makes them have to work so much more than they would if they were free of such unjust debts. I’ve heard technocrats say things like “Thank you industrialization! Now we have time to read books!” Again this is really just propaganda, it is pushing the lie that natural living is harder than artificial living, and that you would have less free time living in harmony with Nature. Now of course since most of us are domesticated and have lost natural skills that need to be acquired (mainly organic gardening, which is not very hard to learn the basics of, and can be very enjoyable) , along with the fact that much of the Earth is under concrete now, initially the transition to a natural way of living may be somewhat difficult, but that will only be during the initial phase as we restore the natural balance and abundance that the Earth and natural communities provide. The more people that establish veganic homesteads, the easier it will be for everyone else, the easier it will be to voluntarily help and share with one another. And anyway, tearing up concrete with some friends can be a lot of fun!

“2500 years is long enough for us to have learned that escape from community, and from the earth, is not a solution, but a root cause of our troubles.”

— John Zerzan, Twilight of the Machines, p. 37

Once people have their own free land, gift-economies would flourish. Today even with the restraints of monetary-slavery, low-wages and high costs, many people regularly give to charity, like local food banks. There have even been cafes opening that have a “pay-what-you-can” policy, along with the common “free-box” phenomenon, community tool-libraries, organic seed libraries, etc. All of this confirms that sharing is a natural thing for human beings to do, and of course it would be a lot more common if people didn’t have to worry about paying the rent, mortgage or taxes! The ancient tradition of human cooperation has been corrupted by the domination/exploitation paradigm, and the foundation of that paradigm is land control and taxation; from there begins the process of siphoning the wealth and energy of the masses up to the few vampires at the top of the social pyramid.

“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public-officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do any thing, resign your office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned office, then the revolution is accomplished.”

– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

But what about roads, security, education and healthcare? If no one is paying taxes for them, won’t we be without them? No, we won’t. Why do people think that only government can provide these things? (A rhetorical question, the answer again being indoctrination.)

“Throughout my year [of living without money], many people suggested I could only live without money because others live with it. ‘How would you have a road to cycle on if there weren’t money and I didn’t pay my taxes?’ It’s an understandable argument, but it’s based on the underlying assumption that you need money to create things.”

– Mark Boyle, The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, p. 193

To think roads, education and healthcare are only possible with government is irrational, denying history and the intelligence and skills of yourself and those within your community, it is a mindset of child-like subservience and helplessness. Time and again natural and voluntary communities have shown that they do a very good job at taking care of one another, without the exploitation or environmental destruction. Yes services and infrastructures like roads will be more natural without centralized governance and industry, but that’s hardly a reason to embrace artificial social-systems of control and destruction! As Mark goes on to say: “I’d happily sacrifice large asphalt-covered roads if it meant we could get back to a truly sustainable way of living.” (p. 194)

Can you imagine living on a homestead with nearby friends and family on their own homesteads, sharing and enjoying the abundance to be had by natural living, out of the grasp of the consumerist corporate world? You would be able to pursue your creative passions alongside enjoyable and health-giving small-scale gardening, sharing the bounties of both with your friends and neighbors, a good life uncorrupted by the need for money… It would be nice wouldn’t it? We might even call it a return to Eden. Yet your imagination might soon drift to what might disturb that peace and satisfaction, and what, if anything, might do that? Government officials would have us believe that if people started living this way they would be victimized by terrorists and criminals, yet isn’t it they themselves that are most likely to arrive with weapons, arresting us, taking away our homes, tearing up our gardens? Of course the answer is yes, this is what they do today (and have done for centuries) whenever anybody tries to live separated from their social system of control and exploitation. The worst terrorism and crimes have been, and continue to be, committed by governments. Government is telling us that we need protection, from people just like themselves! (Speaking of which, if you look into quality sources of information on the terrorist events of 9/11/2001 in New York and 7/7/2005 in London, it’s obvious that the official stories given to us about those events are false, and that those events had to be State-sponsored, just like many others throughout history). Government is just like the mafia by making you pay, through the threat of violence (arrest and imprisonment carried out by people with guns), for protection from themselves; except the mafia doesn’t pretend to be your friend.

The corporatist State uses mass-media every day (yes, it’s really not a “free press”) to instill fear of our neighbors and take attention off themselves (the old divide-and-conquer strategy). They dramatically assault our consciousness repeatedly with crimes, distorting just how common they really are, and most importantly to them, to make you feel that you need protection from it, to make you feel that you need your Big Brother to protect you from your neighbor because they are always out to get you. Yet what they never reveal in the media is that most crime is actually a result of the system itself, most people are brought to desperation and mental illness by being forced into this unnatural and soul-suppressing consumerist/industrialist society. The other important factor to understand is that yes, there are disturbed people out there that can be destructive, so in the interest of our safety we should minimize the amount of destruction they can yield. Therefore we should stop supporting the formation of centralized power which produces nuclear weapons, “smart” bombs, etc. because it is very likely that a disturbed person will gain control of those weapons (just look at all of military history!); additionally false authority and hierarchy is unnatural and corrupts the human mind, and so that means anyone in positions of great power are most likely disturbed individuals! And so, the solution to this dilemma is to eliminate those positions of false power in the first place. A world without governance is actually safer than a world with it; on top of the aforementioned reasoning, there are the historical examples of communities without a central authority that had much less disorder and violence than those with it, this also refutes the belief that without social-systems we are doomed to destructive chaos.

The corporate media also doesn’t mention all the violence government officials take themselves against the public, particularly those speaking and working for peace and justice. After all, as many involved in activism are aware, there are government agents being payed to interfere with nonviolent positive activism as their sole occupation, violating people’s privacy constantly and worse, all of course in the name of “safety.” But safety for whom? Of course it is the preservation of the status-quo that the employers of these agents are concerned with, maintaining their power and control, and peace and justice aren’t exactly compatible with that. The “4th Branch” of the government (the mass-media) may talk about a corrupt politician now and then, but they never question the existence of governance overall, and whether it could actually be harmful to the public; it is always portrayed as our benevolent parental overlord. It’s fairly easy to fall for this trick and think that what we need to control all the so-called “anarchy”, as the mass-media and politicians often say, (a propagandized negative distortion of the true meaning of the word, which is simply “No government”), is more governance, more centralized control, but this omits that the whole planet now consists of one human farm (a.k.a. country) bordering another, and that has not ensured greater safety at all, it has actually brought us to the point of possible extinction through nuclear war and/or ecological collapse. The chaos/destruction we observe around us, from wars, various physical/mental diseases, State-sponsored terrorism, oceans/rivers/air/earth filled with toxic chemicals, acid rain, forest clear-cutting, to nuclear waste/radiation/weapons, dangerous nanotechnology, GMO’s, etc., is not the result of anarchy, it is the result of its opposite: social-systems; most of these tragedies would not exist entirely, and the others reduced dramatically, if we didn’t give the few the unnatural power to create and yield all this destruction in the first place.

Returning to the root solution, there is definitely some recognition that very localized agriculture and trade is a crucial part of a new paradigm among activists world-wide, yet as humans born into this techno-industrial society, many have a hard time forming a clear conception of what a natural life would even look like, or consist of; they are like animals born in captivity.Also like such animals they often become unnaturally attached to their false parents; people often feel indebted to the system, since it has allowed them to survive (no matter how feebly and unnaturally) and so they can become defenders of those that are ultimately their captors, because of a false sense of familial bond. This can be seen often with ultra-patriotic individuals who angrily shout at and villainize anyone who questions “their” government, since subconsciously it is equivalent to questioning or criticizing their own parents.

Whether patriotic or critical of government, most people who do want to make the world a better place have been so indoctrinated into this social-system they totally miss the real solution, and the insurmountable obstacle to that sustainable vision for society: the forcible restriction to living naturally on the Earth. Very good ideas now often surface among good-intentioned people, like “We need less waste, less transportation of energy/resources, support for biodiversity, more recycling, more localized and sustainable production of organic food, we need more self & community sufficiency, we need food sovereignty and local control of natural resources”, and all of this is very good, true and in the in the right direction, but that direction needs to be traveled to its final destination/solution, otherwise the not-so-minor detail that most people can’t afford the land (or time) to live in a truly localized and sustainable way is not addressed, nor is the ineffectiveness of partial environmental solutions. This short-sighted, “working within the system” approach misses where the logical direction of ecological and social science is pointing to, the ultimate ideal: Sovereign Veganic Homesteads. That model is the most local (there’s nothing more local than growing your own food and living on a homestead!), the most sustainable & healthy (veganic agriculture is the most sustainable, healthy and ethical form of agriculture!), the least wasteful (homesteads can be zero waste!), the least dependent on transportation of resources (homesteads can be completely non-dependent!) and energy (homesteads can produce their own energy, if even needed, via windmills, solar/thermal, biofuel, etc.!); veganic homesteading is the sustainability ideal to which all these good ideas are progressing toward, yet the reformer’s train of thought may not venture that far outside the systemic box (thanks again to indoctrination), and so they miss this real “kingdom of heaven” solution. The question to ask yourself when confronted with whatever ecological or social disturbance is “Would (or could) this have occurred in a world of sovereign veganic homesteads?” Once you have that correct prescription of lens to view the world with, so to speak, the reason for why what you’re observing exists will be clear, you will have the fundamental truth that cuts through all the seemingly chaotic disharmony to its fundamental rational cause. This ecological and social template is the only thing that can really produce the positive dramatic change the world needs, now more than ever; half-measures and false climate-change and social-justice solutions offered by industry and government will not be enough, as the facts and current reality makes very evident. Just like the mistake of thinking a social system that is just more democratic and less corrupt will be sufficient, the idea that simply buying more local and producing less waste while still supporting the system, being a “conscious consumer,” though certainly better, is not enough to end the ecocide, mass-injustice and tyranny taking place, nor does it address the root injustice of land control that makes us need to buy (rather than freely produce) the necessities of life in the first place. We must recognize that the whole artificial corporate/consumerist society that we are forced to live in is fundamentally wrong and cannot be reformed into goodness; there is no good form of slavery.

Until land & water is claimed as a birthright by individuals and families, the destruction of mind, body and ecosystem will continue. Sending a nice letter or petition to a CEO of a big company, or to some politician, asking for your fair share of the land & water, free of charge, will obviously be ineffective. The unjust usury-based economic system that exploits the masses, the never-ending wars, the nuclear waste and bombs, and all the rest of what makes up modern “civilization,” will continue to go on until we strike at the root of the evil, as Thoreau put it. All reforms that ignore the root problem of land control and forced taxation will not bring the drastic positive change we need and deserve. The problem is, as Derrick Jensen said in the book Deep Green Resistance (a book I don’t recommend, but this was a good part):

“We do not question the existence of an economic and social system that is working the world to death, that is starving it to death, that is imprisoning it, that is torturing it. We never question the logic that leads inevitably to clear-cuts, murdered oceans, loss of topsoil, damned rivers, poisoned aquifers.”

If we each restore our sovereignty and the earth around us, we can save this planet for future generations. If we keep waiting for someone else to give us our freedom and to restore ecological balance, we will face increasingly unpleasant social and ecological realities, like a complete dystopian police-state and possibly even extinction as a species. We need to stop just saying we care about the Earth and the Life on it, and actually find a piece that we can take care of, and that can take care of us. That would be gaining real traction toward restoring social and ecological balance, that would be making a real difference, being a significant change in the world that we wish to see others emulate. We have failed to see real progress against the juggernaut of imperial/industrial civilization because we have failed to take our rightful and responsible places as women & men of the Earth.

The Right Revolution is not complicated, it doesn’t require guerrilla warfare or even an activist group, it’s an idea not dependent on or corruptible by violence or collectivism of any sort; it is simply claiming your sovereignty and helping others do the same. As I said before educating others about the crucial truth about social-systems is key (e.g. please share this essay), but if you and some others are willing and able to risk arrest for the greater good (like many people are and have been doing) then claim your sovereignty and birthright. Two acres of arable land per family would be sufficient and fair. Those that already have a house and land could just continue living there, but stop paying taxes and costs that prevent them from living freely and naturally. Surrounding community could then support them in eviction resistance, proclaiming that a free place to live on the Earth is a birthright for all. The first steps for those that don’t already have a house or land would be to work with family, friends and willing neighbors to occupy empty land and houses, depave empty concrete lots, and form sovereign homesteads for everyone involved. The little wilderness that still remains should be left alone, there is plenty of land that is already mis/un-used that can be claimed. Helping each other defend against house and land evictions (and remember evictions = the initiation of violence against nonviolent people), the mask of governance is taken off and the truth of tyranny becomes clear to see: there are people that want to live naturally, ethically and freely on the Earth, and there are other people who want them to be their slaves instead. So these other people have men with guns go to your home and tell you that you have to pay up, otherwise they will harm you. Again, this is exactly what the mafia does! There really is no difference, except in appearance; the mafia doesn’t say they are your “representatives”. And so having found this clarity of good vs. evil in the world, people can confidently defend their birthright vs. the violence of others who want to force them to pay for what should be free (i.e. their space and time on this planet). The more people vocalize and act on the fact that sovereign homesteading land is a birthright the more successful this movement will be since there is no good counter-argument to that; the evil of governance will become more clear for everyone as the real front line of the revolution remains in the spot-light (which is well worth repeating): people trying to live natural, free and nonviolent lives, and then men with guns (police) initiating force against them under orders from the State, attempting to return the humans (whom politicians consider their property) to subservience and assimilation, attempting to return these free humans to slavery. Then it will be clearly a battle between violence and nonviolence, and once that moral high-ground is clearly established and widely seen, the lies and propaganda of governance which has shaped human beliefs that have supported this destructive rampage through the centuries can finally be discarded for good.

Just as local communities successfully overcame the mafia in Italy through large numbers of people refusing to comply with their demands, we we can form the Beloved Community (as the great Martin Luther King, Jr. put it) across the world by claiming our birthright and refusing to comply with the demands of so-called “officials”. And remember, this is not “reclaiming the commons” as a citizen, this is reclaiming your birthright as a human.

Gandhi was wisely insistent that Truth and Nonviolence are inseparable; it is only when they are both pure and working together that a force capable of dismantling empire is created. This is why Gandhi was successful against the British Empire and why Martin Luther King, Jr. was successful against the American Empire; by making the good and evil of the situation very clear, by making the nonviolence vs. violence starkly obvious, their movements gained the power to succeed. Look at all other violent revolutionary campaigns throughout history, what significant positive change did they bring? If activism contains lies and violence it is doomed to failure, it is just another version of the evil that is being deplored. No matter how good-intentioned activists are, fighting fire with fire, evil with evil, just doesn’t work; this is why governments hire agent-provocateurs and use many other means to either create or provoke violence, it always works in their favor. Some so-called radical activists have a hard time accepting this, just like they have a hard time accepting the nonviolence and science of veganism, but this is basically just an expression of immaturity, a refusal to face the facts and ethical imperative of current and historical reality. I highly recommend the book “Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea” by Mark Kurlansky and the documentary “A Force More Powerful” for more on this issue.

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Some final quotes and thoughts on safety, the #1 “justification” for governance:

“The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police-state no one is safe.”

– Naomi Wolf, Author of Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries

Do you agree with the above quotations? Perhaps you’re not convinced that a world without social-systems would be safer than our current reality, and perhaps you’d rather have that supposed safety in exchange for your sovereignty and liberty. Perhaps you’re fine with being a money-slave, paying taxes for things you don’t want or agree with, and petitioning and protesting mostly in vain. Perhaps living more freely and naturally just doesn’t sound appealing to you at this point in your life. If so that’s fine, that’s your disposition, your preference. But for those that don’t want to play this game why must they? Why is their choice invalid and yours valid? Why should your preference for supposed greater safety override another’s preference for greater freedom? Why must someone agree to a “social contract” they never signed? There is no principled, rational and true reason for why the choice of greater nonviolence and freedom should be opposed. To say everyone must submit to some other human’s contrived authority, and pay them for services they never asked for, is tyrannical. This is the despotism of all social systems, they are based on force, on violence, and so have already committed a crime before any other has. Governance punishes us with restrictions and servitude at birth for a “pre-crime”; we are charged guilty before innocent at birth, and this is not a defensible position. No one has the right to deny a woman or man their birthright and deny their sovereignty for a crime they’ve never committed.

Also if despite the principled reasoning I have offered in this essay, you’re currently living a pretty comfortable life and find the call for the abolition of government to be “too extreme,” or maybe just sort of scary to you, then because of this you may also disregard the crucial truths I’ve presented. But if you were to look beyond your bubble of comfortable existence (or even just more deeply into it) you’d see how much suffering and destruction is going on in the world around you, how our lives are in fact corrupted by tyranny, and then a call for drastic change would not seem so extreme, but rather more logical and necessary.

There is risk in freedom. It’s safer to never leave your house, but that’s equivalent to house-arrest, to prison. Life can be risky, but we take the risk because the possible rewards, namely happiness and satisfying engagement with the world, creativity, others, Nature, etc. is worth going for. Guaranteed mediocrity is worse than possible joy. We have been denied the possibility of experiencing real freedom and right-living on this planet by social-systems, we have been disallowed from realizing our full potential for happiness.

So don’t accept the belief that heavenly experience is only to be found in the after-life, that we have to live in an unsustainable way and be subject to pre-emptive violence, that we can’t be natural and free humans on this planet. Lets respect the freedom of others, dominate no one and live peacefully in harmony with Nature, each other and other species, lets make Earth more heavenly (i.e. more peaceful, healthy and just) by establishing true kingdoms of heaven, sovereign veganic homesteads, making up voluntary gift-economy communities.

This form of Green Anarchism (more specifically a form of Veganarchism), liberates all species on Earth from a paradigm of domination/slavery and all the negative effects that inevitably causes. At a time when we see ecological (and possible economic) collapse, nuclear disasters and the ever-present threat of nuclear weapons, a growing worldwide-surveillance grid/police-state, further unjust exploitation and disparity of wealth, extinction of species, toxic chemical overload in the air, water, earth and our bodies, Peak Oil, GMO’s corrupting our food supply and health, and on and on, it’s a perspective and solution who’s time has definitely come.

“Government and big business give lip service to protecting us, but often they do just the opposite, and do it knowingly.”

– from the book Poisoned Nation: Pollution, Greed, and the Rise of Deadly Epidemics, by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, p. xix

As I said in my essay The Right Revolution, it’s very important to understand that the reason our society keeps producing more devastating toxins (physical & mental) is because the foundation of this society is toxic, it is based on injustice and lies that inevitably perpetuate more and more of the same. Whether it’s massive petroleum oil spills in the oceans or terrible nuclear power-plant disasters, or the aquifers of communities being filled with toxic chemicals or depleted uranium weapons used in military operations (from Iraq to the beaches of Viesques), all of this has the same origin: social-systems. None of these life-destroying wasteland-producing events could have taken place if it was not for the funneling of enormous wealth and power to the few by coercing the many into being dependent money/tax-slaves. If you think these events are not all connected to that root injustice, if you think that it’s just a matter of having more democracy and oversight so that we can prevent these tragedies from happening in the future, I understand your perspective (I used to share it), but ultimately that perspective is ignorant and unintelligent, in denial of the cause and effect aspect of the reality in which we live. You can’t ignore the root (forced participation in social-systems) when complaining about the fruit (toxic destruction on a mass-scale), but that’s what most people still do, mainly because they have been relentlessly propagandized from a young age that social-systems are natural and good, and they hold that irrational and false belief that skews their perception of the world around them. When the next disaster happens, rather than just shake your head in frustration, try to do some critical thinking as to whether if no one was coerced into funding corporatist-state military-industrial-complexes (and could live freely, naturally, self-sufficiently and sustainably off the land via veganic homesteading) it could have ever happened in the first place.

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The following are 5 examples of how our unnatural society simultaneously exposes us to toxins and tyranny, (please also see my Health Tips page for more important information on this topic.)

1.Fluoridated Water: First, listen to this dentist against water fluoridation:

And watch this short documentary on fluoride:

Second, read the books “The Fluoride Deception” by Christopher Bryson and “The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There” by Paul Connett, James Beck, and H. Spedding Micklem.
Third, read what I have to say: We are told “it’s good for your teeth”, even though thousands of doctors and scientists disagree, presenting the evidence that fluoride is a TOXIN that does only harm to the body, specifically the brain, and lowers IQ. A quarter oz. of sodium fluoride in your toothpaste is considered poisonous and if swallowed you are alerted to contact a poison control center, but the same amount of that same fluoride is in a single glass of tap water (and your supposed to drink 8 a day!), but there is no warning on that, in fact they say that’s good for you!

98% Of Western Europe has rejected water fluoridation (including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden). Fluoride is a powerful poison – more acutely poisonous than lead. This explains why fluoride is the active ingredient in many pesticides and rodenticides. It also explains whyaccidental over-ingestion of fluoride can cause serious toxic symptoms. As documented in the Journal of Dental Research (Whitford 1987, 1990), there is enough fluoride in a tube of flavored children’s toothpaste to kill an average-weighing child under the age of 9. EPA scientists, along with many others, have called for a ban on water fluoridation, yet it continues to be added to the public water supply every day! Why?! The same goes for Chlorine, and Aluminum, which are added to our drinking water by the State in water-treatment plants to “purify” the water, while ignoring the negative health effects of these other toxins, as well as rejecting safe filtration/purification alternatives. Since the State is fundamentally against Nature, and is fundamentally violent, it actually makes sense that the most important thing for life to exist, water, would be filled with toxins by that toxic social-structure; this is a crucial understanding that should be kept in mind while reading on about other toxins we are unnecessarily exposed to, it is seeing karma manifest.

2.Mercury Tooth Fillings: We are told this deadly TOXIN, that dissolves constantly and emits TOXIC vapor, is “perfectly safe”, even though again thousands of doctors/scientists, and people with the common sense that poison = bad for me, have been trying to ban mercury fillings for years. I have heard of many testimonies from people who suffered from chronic depression and fatigue, and other ailments, for YEARS, then took their mercury fillings out and did a metal detox, and the depression and fatigue, etc. shortly thereafter went away. The FDA has Reluctantly Admitted Mercury Fillings Have Neurotoxic Effects on Children. What do you know? Poison isn’t good for you! Yet it is still being put in children’s teeth everyday! And now, millions of people like myself have them already but can’t afford to remove them, another great example of a crazy/tyrannical society: they fill your mouth with toxins but make it unaffordable to replace them with something nontoxic. (Just as many people can’t afford the reverse-osmosis filter needed to remove fluoride from their drinking water). Massive amounts of mercury is also in the air all of us breathe because of coal-electricity-plants, and mercury is also found in much of the corn syrup in America! See the documentary Mercury Undercover to learn more about mercury pollution and poisoning http://www.mercuryundercover.com/

3.Toxic sweeteners: like aspartame, available for free at almost ever diner table in America (strange that toxins are free but organic food is expensive isn’t it?). Meanwhile natural alternatives to sugar like Stevia, which have no side effects whatsoever, has been called an “unsafe food additive” by the FDA. Also artificial food colorings, directly linked to many health problems, are perfectly legal. So poison is OK, but natural non-poison is bad. Also now that there has been extensive public awareness about the dangers of aspartame, the government, directed by the corporations that make these toxic food additives, has approved a similar chemical called neotame, and also approved that this chemical does not need to be listed on the list of ingredients, and can be included in certified USDA organic foods! Just like with vaccines (discussed more below), corporations and government think they have the right to put things in your body without your knowledge or choice, and that’s pure tyranny! Welcome to the Orwellian world of Corporate America. It would be a mistake to think that if we get them to label a couple toxins we have found out about (who knows what we are unaware of!) we would be safe, there are thousands of untested chemicals allowed in cosmetic and other products (often just labeled “fragrance” or “inert”) and there is no way that government/industry is going to ban them all until each is tested to be safe, that would be too much of a profit-loss, and that’s all they really care about it. What needs to be remembered is that there is always the danger that those with the power to do things like put secret chemicals in our food, water and air may do so, and this is one of the reasons why we must eliminate these positions of unnatural power so these kind of things can’t happen anymore. Social-systems have always been toxic, for centuries, it is only now that with the creation of artificial toxic chemicals and modern technology that their true nature is becoming even more clear, hopefully the masses will awaken to this truth before the Earth and our bodies become irreversibly toxic and damaged. Already the umbilical-cord blood of babies is filled with hundreds of toxic chemicals, and women’s breast milk has been filled with so many toxins that qualifies as hazardous waste unfit for human consumption according to current standards. Are we just going to abandon being natural homosapiens and submit to becoming homotoxicus?

Vaccines are a pharmaceutical product, and that industry has a consistent history of malpractice. One company, Merck, puts highly toxic mercury in their vaccines, a proven neurotoxin. Tens of thousands of parents have reported that their healthy child suddenly became very ill, many becoming autistic, after vaccinations. Many of these parents formed a rally in Washington, D.C. called “Green Our Vaccines”, where thousands attended. GREEN OUR VACCINES! Why the hell is such a rally even necessary?! Why the hell are our vaccines TOXIC?!

Robert F. Kennedy gives an amazing speech about government cover ups and the harmful effects of toxins in vaccines. Part 1 of 2. Green Our Vaccines Rally.

Why is a group like “Mom’s Against Mercury” necessary?! Various government officials, with their official reports, say this is just “conspiracy theory” and that these tens of thousands of children just happened to get autism and other illness right after receiving massive doses of vaccines, “by coincidence”. Yes, just trust Big Brother once again, don’t rely on your own instincts or common sense, government and corporate officials always tell the truth after all, especially about things that would implicate them in a crime! Only a wacko conspiracy theorist would think otherwise!

Being forced to trust someone, especially someone in a position of power, is really what’s crazy; many people become unthinking and pathetically subservient when anyone in a position of “official” authority tells them what is true or good, even when common sense shows it to be false and bad; this is the power of indoctrination/conditioning.

“Many in the medical community continue to dismiss this as a mere happenstance because autism often coincides with the time of vaccination and state that there is no scientific evidence to back this up. My question to you is, how long does it take for a coincidence to surface time and again, case after case, before it can become a viable hypothesis, especially when the solution to solving this problem seems so apparent? How can pharmaceutical companies concoct substance with mercury, formaldehyde, antifreeze, lead, aluminum and live viruses not expect that as they continue to pour these highly toxic and reactive substances into children, increasing dose after dose, all on the same day even, that it WON’T alter their developing minds and bodies? Why would it be so completely impossible for a child to actually contract a chronic form of the disease rather than have a “proper immunological response,” especially when their immune systems may not be up to par? And where is THEIR scientific evidence to back up the claim that this cannot happen, when it is published in the very package inserts, in their writing, that they have not studied the effects of vaccines for more than few weeks, or longer than the incubation period of the disease itself? What happens when you give multiple doses in one day or combine different diseases into one hypodermic needle?

Could someone explain to me why it is acceptable to have products on the market that exposed my child to 37.5 micrograms of mercury in one day when at the time he should not have been exposed to more than .59 micrograms of mercury given his body weight? Even a body as big as mine shouldn’t be exposed to more than 5 micrograms of mercury in one day. That is completely unacceptable. One size does not fit all when it comes to vaccines.

Through our organization, Unlocking Autism, we have talked to thousands and thousands of parents across the country, and their story is the same. Child is normal, child gets a vaccine, child disappears within days or weeks into the abyss of autism.”

In recent years it appears they are phasing out the mercury in vaccines, but there are still other toxins, like Formalin and Aluminum (linked to Alzheimers, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrigs disease), along with many other toxins, and those are only what we know about, since THE FULL INGREDIENT LIST ON VACCINES REMAINS SECRET! WHY WOULD YOU INJECT YOUR CHILD WITH SOMETHING IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS? BECAUSE YOUR FAITH IN AUTHORITY IS THAT GREAT? If so, that’s your choice, but be sure not to criticize those that choose otherwise. Many people in the “land of the free” and elsewhere around the world have lost sight of the importance of personal freedom, and have accepted collectivist indoctrination, and this is much more dangerous than any unvaccinated child will ever be; it is the slippery slope to increasing tyranny from government officials, who remember are not (and never have been) saints by any means! To trust a few people with immense destructive power is not intelligent, it ignores all of human history and the constantly re-affirming fact of human fallibility we see every day. We need to mature to the point where we investigate things for ourselves and make independent decisions, not based on propaganda or blind-faith, but on facts and common sense; especially concerning our children’s health and safety.

They have no right to force us to put ANYTHING into our bodies or our children’s bodies that we don’t want to, that is a fundamental human right, that’s why on that level All debate as to whether vaccinations are safe or not is actually irrelevant. The real issue is whether individuals have the right to control their own bodies or not. If an individual does not have that right, they are technically the slave of another, in this case a slave of the government. Of course vaccinations have a history of many ill effects, but this back and forth on what study is valid and which is discredited (the voice/lies of government/corporations being most dominant of course thanks to the corporate media, a.k.a. the “4th Branch” of the government) is really just a distraction from the core issue of freedom vs. tyranny. If the government can tell you what you can put in your body, like alcohol but not marijuana, and force you to put something in your body that you don’t want, like a vaccine, you are not free. It is always in the name of “safety” that governments violate the rights of the people, and often the “danger” is manufactured by the government officials themselves in order to justify their police-state measures, as was clearly the case with 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London.

Being forcefully vaccinated when you currently have no contagious disease is a “preemptive” attack on your body and a violation of your rights, supposedly to prevent the possible violation of other people’s rights, though that may never actually happen. No one should have to apply for a waiver or face any penalty for their choice of nonviolence concerning a pre-emptive and possibly dangerous series of injections to themselves or their children. This is the most important aspect of the vaccine debate: the issue of people being forced. Whether or not many other people say that it is for the greater good or not, the fact is that this amounts to some people initiating force against other people, it is an act of violence and tyranny. When we hear in the mass-media (all owned by only a few corporations, which are often tied with the pharmaceutical industry) “this government or pharmaceutical company study says it’s perfectly safe”, that very well may be a lie, or at least mistaken, but the “common people”, i.e. the “citizenry”, are told to shut up and just have blind faith in those deeming themselves their parental overlords. Anything compulsory equates to saying your opinion is extraneous and inferior to those of people employed by controlling institutions; your doubts are made irrelevant because in the view of the controllers, they are superior to you, they have the right to control you and your children because you are inferior to them. If we accept mandatory vaccines, we open the door for other mandatory actions against our personal sovereignty; we become more and more the property of government, to do with as however they see fit.

Now if this seems a bit extreme to you, you may be thinking something like “My doctor isn’t some evil authoritarian, he cares about me and my kids.” That may very well be true, but that ignores three important factors at play:

1) Most doctors coming from mainstream medical schools are heavily influenced by corporate interests, their education has been greatly corrupted and limited by industry. To expect them to have knowledge of key aspects of relevant subjects like nutrition and environmental toxicity is wishful thinking, they are for the most part very ignorant in these crucial areas.

2) It’s irrelevant to the larger issue of personal freedom and choice. People have the right to control their own bodies and not be forced to do anything they don’t want to do by others, whether they are truly good-intentioned doctors or not.

3) All the testimony that vaccines have directly caused severe illness, like this:

Also to ignore the countless times doctors and officials have lied, or were at the least mistaken, and caused severe harm, and to think that somehow the current establishment authorities are faultless saints upon the Earth who could never cause harm through their authoritarian actions, intentionally or not, is absurd. This underlying assumption, this unquestioning trust in authority, is not logical or principled, it is merely an opinion, an opinion that is heavily shaped by indoctrination. Like mandatory taxation, mandatory vaccination is being forced to do something that may be against your will, for the supposed “greater good”, despite the lack of proof, and despite the contradictory historical facts; authoritarianism can never be perfectly safe or principled because of human fallibility, which can lead to things like, say, your tax dollars going to fund a war based on lies that kills millions of civilians in another country. But again, there need be no examples of this violation of trust; the fact that it is even a possibility means that from a human rights perspective, no one can be forced to do something (i.e. be subjected to violence) because it may be for the “greater good”.

The only thing we can say with certainty is for the greater good is nonviolence, and therefore mandatory vaccinations, along with any other mandatory act (like taxation) is immoral because it is the initiation of force, it is violence. Authoritarianism & violence is immoral, personal freedom & nonviolence is moral. End of story.

What could be more crazy than being told that poison is good for you, and truly beneficial things are bad? Ignore the lies you’re being told; don’t drink toxic water, eat/drink toxic sweeteners, inject your body with toxic vaccines or fill your mouth with toxic fillings, and tell your “representatives” that you want these mass poisonings of the public to end, but don’t rely on them to, since that will probably never happen; the best thing you can do for your health (and your freedom) is disconnect from their system of social control by living as a sovereign and natural human on the Earth.

“Let’s be clear: Those in power are poisoning children, stealing their physical and cognitive health: making them weak, sick, and dumb.”

While Big Brother keeps telling us they care about our rights, health and environment while using most of every tax dollar toward military occupations based on the fraud known as the “war on terror,” and giving billions of tax dollars to already rich bankers in massive “bail-outs,” what can we do, to disconnect from this system of exploitation and destruction?

If we want real “national security” shouldn’t we be supporting greater personal and environmental health through self-sufficiency? Why not promote & support people owning their own tax-free land so they don’t have to be dependent on fraudulent Federal Reserve notes for survival, having to pay rent or property taxes their whole lives to live on a piece of Earth that should be a right for all? Why not bring back Victory Gardens so people can grow their own food/medicine and not be dependent on corporations for basic necessities?

Why not end our dependency on the private central bank debt-based fractional reserve system (The Federal Reserve) that our entire economy is basically run by, that is a continual crime against the American People?! The Federal Reserve, a private central bank, produces money out of thin air, (that’s what the fractional in a Fractional Reserve means basically) and then charges us, the taxpayers, interest on every dollar they produce, so that we can never truly “balance the budget;” the system is designed to create continual debt, and therefore make the Public continually dependent, and solidify the control of the banks over our society.

So how can we be less dependent on bankers and corporations who don’t care about people suffering? How can we avoid poverty without participating in a rigged/unjust monetary system?

First of all, what is poverty exactly? We are told it is lack of money. But is it really? When we think of those that are extremely poor, what do we picture? Someone who doesn’t have adequate food, water, clothing and shelter. Yet, is money really necessary for those things? If someone lives in a home they own, on land they own, and grows their own food, has access to clean drinking water, and perhaps even some solar power and a small wind turbine, what do they need money for? If they had little to none, but were content with their lives, would you call them “poor?” Isn’t that what we’re really after, security of the basic necessities and happiness, not money? But I cant afford to buy land or a house, let alone solar panels, you are probably thinking, and that’s the main problem that needs to be dealt with, as I will discuss more shortly.

“Though people have not progressed beyond the need to eat food and drink water and wear clothes and live in houses, most people have progressed beyond the domestic arts – the husbandry and wifery of the world – by which those needful things are produced and conserved. In fact, the comparative few who still practice that necessary husbandry and wifery often are inclined to apologize for doing so, having been carefully taught in our education system that those arts are degrading and unworthy of people’s talents.

Educated minds, in the modern era, are unlikely to know anything about food and drink, clothing and shelter. In merely taking these things for granted, the modern educated mind reveals itself also to be as superstitious a mind as ever has existed in the world. What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food? … Most people appear to assume that when they have paid their money for these things they have entirely met their obligations.

Money does not bring forth food. Neither does the technology of the food system. Food comes from nature and from the work of people.”

– Wendell Berry, in “Orion” magazine, summer 1999.

Increasing one’s self-sufficiency makes a lot of sense, but can be very difficult, and maybe becoming completely self-sufficient is not even the ideal. Strong homestead communities that support each other can be a source of needed physical resources as well as friendship, service and real fun, things our modern society greatly lacks. Being dependent on private central banks for the basic necessities of life is dangerous, as Americans learned during the last Great Depression, (which was basically caused by the banks, by suddenly shrinking the money supply drastically, to cause the collapse of smaller banks, so they could further concentrate their wealth and power to even more astronomical heights, which today is higher than ever). Trying to afford the basics while having a low-paying job is hard enough, but then it may be difficult to find any job in the first place. Unemployment keeps rising, as the bankers wallets get fatter… A population that is without the means to the basic necessities of life can be much more easily manipulated and controlled by the few that have abhorrent amounts of wealth, to further grow that wealth even more. One possible future manifestation of this has been reported as the possibility of a manufactured flu being released on the public, and then pushing unhealthy vaccines on an already mostly unhealthy populace. Sound crazy? Well it is! But guess what? There are people that crazy in positions of great power, and historically there always has been! And in fact there is already something that crazy and wrong going on, continually, every day: fluoridation of our water supply and mercury being put in our vaccines and tooth fillings.

Back to the issue of poverty and dependency (on corporations/government that obviously don’t have our health & happiness in mind); being more self-sufficient and less controllable by government/corporations sounds great, but you may not be able to afford to own your own house or land. Me neither! That’s why this social-system has continually expanded the gap between rich and poor, and made it so a few earn in days of interest on the money sitting in their accounts what the majority would have to work for years to earn. It’s a system that is inherently unjust, which if after realizing this, you want to boycott, is not easy to get out of. Many Americans think getting into debt by taking out loans and getting credit cards is just the way it has to be, and so they get into so much debt they have to work the rest of their lives (doing work that isn’t their passion) just to pay it off, and never have money enough to own the land/house, etc. we really need, and that money is just a manufactured tool to obtain.

We live in a society that creates dependency, a competitive/non-cooperative mindset, ill-health, and unhappiness… all of which benefit the few while harming the many.

I am fully aware that basically what is being proposed here is not a new idea to the Native Peoples of this continent; my contribution is only one of specificity. An excellent overview of the issue of industrial hemp cultivation and Native Americans can be found in the documentary “Standing Silent Nation” (www.standingsilentnation.com).

In this essay, I begin with background information on cannabis prohibition, then give my arguments against it, and finish with a short strategy plan that can be adopted by Americans & Native Americans working in solidarity that believe will be very productive. I humbly submit this in support of all Native Americans in hope that it may serve as a plan of action that can not only increase their health, wealth and well-being, but also heal Mother Earth from the ravages of the oil, coal, uranium, timber, chemical/GMO agribusiness and livestock industries, along with the systematic problems of corporate exploitation/forced dependence and tyrannical sovereignty violations (by the DEA and others). Also this sustainable and self-sufficient model will be an example to Americans who have been thoroughly indoctrinated by corporate consumerism and participation in destructive social-systems that harm the environment and their own health & well being.

Background

The amazing environmental and economic potential of Industrial Hemp is well understood by many people, including many Native Americans. The following is from an article by Winona LaDuke which appeared in Indian Country Today, September 19, 2001:

“The federal government should grant a waiver to Native Nations who seek to legalize the production of industrial hemp… Over the long term, the DEA’s policies and actions set back the economic, environmental, and public health needs of not only Native America, but also the broader American community.”

“Decriminalizing industrial hemp is the way of the future. The sovereign status of Native Nations raises questions about the application of DEA regulations in the face of tribal ordinances. The need for alternative economies in Indian country supports the need for change.”

In a letter to the U.S. Attorney for South Dakota, Oglala Tribal President John Yellowbird Steele said:

“The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 did not divest the Lakota people of our reserved right to plant and harvest whatever crops we deem beneficial to our reservation… we regard the the enforcement of our hemp ordinance and production of our marijuana laws tribal matters… we ask for your government’s compassion as we try to ease the pain of our poverty through hemp manufacturing… my nation needs to grow industrial hemp to aid our efforts at becoming more self-sufficient.”

Of course the immediate reaction of the US Federal Government/DEA is always something like: “Hemp is illegal to grow because it interferes with our ability to eradicate Marijuana.” One could argue against them by pointing out that industrial hemp has no usable THC, and therefore marijuana laws are not relevant, and that would be a good argument. However, the backward politicians will always use marijuana as the excuse as to why Native (and non-Native) American farmers can not grow hemp, regardless of whether that makes sense or not. The “war on drugs” in general is of course also a farce, the CIA and other governmental agencies have been involved in the illegal drug trade for a long time. They use this fake “war” to maximize profits and “justify” police-state measures domestically and violence abroad. This is just like the “war on terror” which is based on the Big Lie known as the official 9/11 story (See the documentary “9/11 Press For Truth” (www.911pressfortruth.com) and the book “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions” by David Ray Griffin, along with the research of Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice (stj911.org) and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org)), that they use to “justify” an illegal war that has killed over a million Iraqis, and tortured and illegally detained countless others, while removing American citizens Constitutional Rights through treasonous bills like The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, etc. I mention this here because it is necessary to openly reject these foundational lies if we are to move forward in the interest of sustainability, peace, justice and freedom. We must openly “honor, present and serve the truth”; it is the only way to effectively reject supposed “justifications” for the violence, oppression and destruction brought by a few ill-minded individuals in positions of power.

The oppression and tyranny imposed in the name of “the war and drugs” is well documented: illegal forfeiture (property seized from citizens who were not even charged with a crime), police-state surveillance, innocents killed in drug-raids, Native American crops being destroyed, arbitrary arrests and unjust imprisonments, etc. All of this will go on as long as we accept being treated like children, subject to the totally unjust tyranny of being told what things we can put in our own bodies and what we cannot. The international illegal drug trade causes more harm then the drugs themselves, and prohibition supports the continuation of this criminal market. Drug abuse and addiction is a health problem and should not be criminal in itself; Education and treatment are far more effective and compassionate to those that suffer from drug addiction.

The hypocrisy and destructive insanity of US Federal policy can be found in numerous areas, besides cannabis laws, and this is a manifestation of the fact they are basically operating as slave-masters, and that evil root will always produce evil branches, like cannabis prohibition.

Back to Industrial Hemp, it is the tough, course fiber of the cannabis sativa plant, which contains less than 1 percent tetrahydrocannabinol – THC – the main active ingredient in marijuana. Marijuana is a strain of cannabis that contains much higher levels of THC. You can’t get high from smoking hemp, and eating hemp foods will not make you test positive for marijuana use in a drug test.

Hemp can easily replace trees for paper and building materials with a higher-quality fiber, significantly reducing the deforestation that accelerates global warming and the extinction of wildlife and plant species. Hemp is also an alternative to cotton for clothing that does not require the use of toxic pesticides (the cotton industry uses enormous amounts of harmful pesticides). Hemp-seeds are also very nutritious food source, and the high cellulose content of the hemp plant makes it ideal for conversion into ethanol fuel, which can be used by flexible-fuel vehicles (To learn more about the many beneficial uses of this amazing plant I recommend reading the book The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer, available online for free here: http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/ and also A Renewal of Common Sense by Erik Rothenburg, found for free here: http://www.votehemp.com/renewal.html#Treatise)

Industrial hemp is legal to grow in more than 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, New Zealand, Romania, Russia and Spain. The U.S. federal government is certainly out of step with other countries concerning hemp policy. However, things are better at the state level, as of April 2014, these 13 states have removed barriers for industrial hemp production: California, Colorado, Indiana, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. Yet shouldn’t Native Americans be free to cultivate Industrial Hemp too? Aren’t they supposed to have more autonomy from U.S. law than those deemed citizens? American farmers should be growing hemp in defiance of the Federal level tyranny and in solidarity with Native Americans in reservations throughout this continent who also desire to grow hemp.

In order to help you have clear understanding of how wrong cannabis prohibition is I will now go into further detail about the law.

Drugs are placed into one of five schedules under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Marijuana is listed as a Schedule 1 drug, the most dangerous category, defined as having a high potential for abuse and having no currently accepted medical use in the United States. Claiming that natural marijuana has no medicinal value by placing it in the Schedule 1 drug category goes against the findings of doctors throughout the world, and is contradicted by the 21 states that have laws allowing seriously ill patients to use natural medical marijuana with their doctors’ recommendation. It is also contradicted by the existence and use of artificial marijuana, known as Marinol, which is legal.

Arguments

Many prohibitionists discredit the need for a hemp industry, saying hemp re-legalization is being used as a vehicle to re-legalize marijuana. The Drug Enforcement Administration said hemp legalization would interfere with its marijuana eradication program because of the similarities between the two types of cannabis plants. Therefore, hemp will probably never be re-legalized as long as marijuana remains prohibited. Marginalizing the legitimacy of the call to legalize marijuana by focusing solely on hemp re-legalization would be fruitless as well as wrong. After all, marijuana prohibition is an unconstitutional and oppressive policy, violating citizens’ right to control their own bodies without harming others or their property. Therefore, the call for legalization should be for industrial hemp, medical marijuana and the private and responsible recreational adult use of marijuana all together.

The many materials that hemp can produce, including paper, cloth, and Biomass fuel, can be of great benefit to Native Americans and the environment. Why are we using toxic polluting fuels instead of cleaner renewable fuels like Biofuel, Solar and Wind energy? Why are we destroying forests, drastically altering the Earth’s ecosystem for the worse, when we can use hemp to create higher quality paper and construction products instead? One is left to conclude that the reasons for the restrictions on the use of this plant are not based on the well being of the American people (and certainly not Native People either), but rather this law serves the financial interest of industries/agencies that would lose money and power if hemp and marijuana were a legal commodity.

The Industrial Hemp Farming Act has been introduced in Congress, but has not been passed because of “concerns about marijuana.” This will always be their excuse and that is why I believe we should reject both laws restricting the growing of industrial hemp and marijuana for responsible adult use. Only if marijuana is legalized is it likely that hemp will be legalized, and marijuana should be legal, so there is no good reason to separate the issues; the US Federal government continues to use lies about marijuana as their supposed justification to continue the destructive and oppressive prohibition on industrial hemp, so we need to look into the marijuana issue first.

Why are marijuana’s many medicinal properties ignored by the federal government? Its placement as a Schedule 1 drug is in defiance to the conclusions of doctors and medical professionals from around the world. The debatable negative health effects of marijuana are minuscule when compared to the dangers of alcohol or tobacco, not one death has ever been attributed solely to marijuana use, while hundreds of thousands die from tobacco and alcohol every year in America. Defending the continued prohibition of cannabis in the interest of public health is completely ridiculous. The truth is the cannabis plant has been used as a safe and effective medicine throughout the world for centuries. A citizen’s responsible personal use of marijuana should no longer be a crime, it is an act that is certainly no more criminal then drinking wine or smoking tobacco.

The argument that marijuana prohibition protects our children is also not based in reality. Illegal drug dealers do not care how young a buyer is, and without legalizing and regulating marijuana, many children find it easier to buy than alcohol or tobacco. In Holland, where the sale of marijuana to adults is not criminalized, the percentage of teenagers using marijuana is less than half that of American teenagers.

Cannabis should be removed from the Schedule 1 category and be legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco – a minimum age of 21 for purchase and use, illegal for use while driving, and so on.

Marijuana and hemp prohibition costs billions every year to enforce, creates a black market that generates violence and corruption, and makes criminals out of millions of productive and harmless adults. Americans (both Native and non-Native) should once again have the legal right to use the cannabis plant for its many beneficial uses including medicine, paper, fuel, clothing and food. The book “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herer (http://jackherer.com/) and the documentary “The Hemp Revolution” directed by Anthony Clarke are two great resources for further information on the benefits of hemp.

For those who wish to use this plant responsibly for medical or private use, and those who wish to use industrial hemp to help end deforestation and provide a source of income, food, clothing, shelter and fuel for their families, the US Federal government acts as an oppressor. Legalizing marijuana and hemp for adult use would not be a promotion of drug use, it would be a promotion of freedom and liberty that we are all entitled to.

There is no reason why we should allow lies, propaganda and outright oppression and tyranny to continue on for another generation; they are few, we are many. All we need is an effective plan of non-violent action to overthrow the destructive paradigm with a sustainable, just and healthy one.

Action Plan

There are many hemp products on the American market today, and their popularity grows every year. There are hemp clothing stores (www.hempstores.com) throughout the country as well as hemp food products (www.manitobaharvest.com, www.naturespath.com, etc.) on the shelves of countless markets coast to coast as well. All of the hemp that is used in these products is imported from other nations since it is illegal for Native and American farmers to grow hemp. There has recently been a lot of resistance to this from both Native and non-Native American farmers, people are growing it anyway, as they have the natural right to do. American hemp farmers should work in solidarity with Native Americans growing industrial hemp; the millions of dollars being made in this industry today can be made by Native Americans along with other hemp growers throughout the world.

When I buy hemp bread, cereal, hummus, waffles, hemp milk (www.livingharvest.com, a personal favorite), protein powder, hemp seed oil, etc. and I see the label “Product of Canada” etc., I think it should say “Product of the Republic of Lakota” (or any other tribe)! And I know I am not alone with this sentiment. Millions of Americans would support Native American business if given the opportunity; many Americans are aware of the history of European colonization, the genocide, the tyranny, the treaties that were all broken, etc. Many Americans of European descent like myself would love the opportunity to do anything, however small, in supporting Native American sovereignty and enterprise, especially when incorporating the industrial hemp industry, that all well-informed Americans support for the environmental and health benefits it offers. We would not only be helping Native Americans, we would be helping ourselves through the expansion of a sustainable industry that can replace the destructive and harmful petrol-chemical/coal/timber/nuclear, etc. industries currently dominating the market. Industrial hemp, used for biofuel, paper, clothing, etc., when coupled with renewable clean energy like solar and wind power, has the potential to save our planet’s ecosystem, our health and economic well-being.

All of the stores that carry hemp products currently would certainly purchase from Native Americans instead of other nations if given the choice. And yearly, there are Hemp Festivals held throughout the country (www.hempfest.org, www.bostonhempfest.com, etc.) that promote the hemp industry and speak out against cannabis prohibition, these festivals would be ideal for spreading the word about Native American grown hemp. Also along the many cannabis law reform organizations like VoteHemp.com, NORML (www.norml.org), MPP (www.mpp.org), the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org) would surely support the movement for a Native American Hemp Industry.

If multiple tribes worked together and called on the support of a) those already growing hemp and b) organizations and festivals that support Hemp Legalization and c) consumers of hemp products, it would be an unstoppable force. The Feds/DEA would be powerless to mass civil-disobedience on such a large scale.

The potential for economic growth on Native reservations is astronomical, and of course this income is urgently needed due to the extreme poverty that currently exists on reservations. Who better than Native Americans to prosper from a new sustainable paradigm that incorporates the most beneficial plant known to man? Who better to openly reject and lead non-violent rebellion against the hypocrisy, ignorance, destruction and oppression of US Federal governmental policy? Like Winona La Duke said: “Decriminalizing industrial hemp is the way of the future.”

Our culture is filled with stories, and some well-known stories are not as innocent and harmless as is commonly believed. If we take time to think about them more deeply, and how they may influence our lives, we can discover underlying meaning and messages that actually disempower us greatly and misdirect us away from crucial truth about our Reality. By becoming aware of this, we can free ourselves from mental ties that keep us from progress, both personally and socially. Here I will focus on one of the most well known stories in the world, that of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden, and I will also analyze the mainstream teachings and beliefs concerning the salvation offered by Jesus of Nazareth (Yeshua the Messiah), to show how both have been distorted, and are thereby doing much more harm than good for society, through subliminally pushing false, irrational and immoral ideas that are disempowering. I will give alternative positive ways (what I believe are the correct ways) to view the Garden of Eden story and the teachings of Jesus so that we can reclaim them in the interest of truth, peace, justice, and enlightenment.

The traditional story of Adam & Eve defies common sense, and is even blasphemous, in multiple ways. Firstly it says God put a special tree in Paradise with fruit that Adam & Eve were forbidden to eat, thereby making God a tempter of evil. Secondly, we’re told that God tells Adam that if he does eat it, “in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17), which doesn’t happen, Adam doesn’t die in the day he ate the fruit, making God out to be a liar. Thirdly, the story we know says God was supposedly forbidding woman and man from gaining the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a.k.a. morality, thus making God out to be immoral. So altogether this nonsense story portrays God as an immoral tempter of evil, and a liar; that’s an exact description of the Devil, not God. And yet most Christians accept this blasphemous absurdity, for no reason other than it’s what they were taught by religious “authority.” Indoctrination to always submit to “authority” is pervasive and invasive, making false religious dogma difficult to identify and then reject for many people. It is possible though, when truth, common sense and morality become the priorities, not dogma. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in the Bible, but the story of Adam & Eve as found in the book of Genesis, is definitely not an example of it. The only way the story could make sense is if Satan had corrupted all the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge with lies, i.e. with false morality, and God, knowing this, forbade Adam & Eve from eating of it, because that false morality would take them out of Paradise. Instead of intelligently acknowldeggin this, many Christians resort to rationalizations to try and make the story legitamate, like this: “Adam and Eve, by rebelliosly partaking of the tree of knowledge of good & evil, sought to assume the right to determine the two, but that right is only God’s.” Now again this makes no sense, if the fruit of this tree gave Adam & Eve this knowledge, how is that “assuming the right to determine” that knowledge? That’s the complete opposite of assuming the right! If they wanted to assume the right to determine good and evil on their own, then they wouldn’t eat that fruit, i.e. they wouldn’t be seeking that knowledge anywhere outside themselves.

But without that caveat of lies in the fruit, the story doesn’t make any sense at all, and as I said, is blasphemous. Why would knowing the difference between right and wrong be a bad thing? Wouldn’t God want you to know what was Good & Evil so you could always choose the Good? That’s obviously what the Ten Commandments were all about, as was what Jesus was all about too: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the Devil’s work” (1 John 3:8); “Then Jesus told him, ‘I entered this world to render judgment–to give sight to the spiritually blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind’ (John 9:39).

Also hasn’t your own personal experience shown that having this Knowledge is very important in order to make your life better, avoid harm and reject injustice? And isn’t good child-rearing mostly a matter of teaching your child the difference between right and wrong? Plus how can we look at the horrific (and also at times beautiful) history of human civilization and not see a clear contrast between Good & Evil? So much tragedy in people’s personal lives and on the social-scale could have been prevented if there was a clear understanding of what’s good and what’s evil, rather than confusion over it. Examples of the latter that instantly come to my mind include: the American South’s continued insistence on maintaining slavery in the 18th & 19th centuries, 1930’s Germany, early Vietnam War, China’s Invasion into Tibet, Iraq/Afghanistan invasions by the U.S. military, the 2000 U.S. Presidential election theft by Bush/Cheney, various new environmental pollutants and bodily toxins being approved and utilized by the public, etc. Another sociopolitical example would be the prohibition of industrial hemp farming, while hemp is the most beneficial plant available to humans (The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden?), able to provide nutritious food, clothing, building materials, fuel and medicine.

Think about it: How can we have progress without a sense of what’s right and wrong? Isn’t that what progress always really is? A progression from the bad to the good in varying degree?

“Those who know right as right, and know the wrong to be wrong, ascend to happy states of being, for they hold right views.”

– The Buddha, The Dhammapada, Chapter 22

The story of the “forbidden fruit,” as it is commonly told, is a centuries-old piece of misinformation used to continue the status-quo paradigm; it does not encourage the questioning of authority or the progress of humanity. By telling us that having the Knowledge of Good and Evil is bad, this story reinforces mass disempowerment of humanity. Without understanding of what is harmful and what is not, how can we ever act compassionately? And so why would having this Knowledge be prohibited by a loving Creator? To say that seeking the Knowledge of Good and Evil is wrong is equivalent to saying love is wrong, that love is a sin! An idea couldn’t be more more backwards, and is certainly not fitting for Divinity. Intelligent Christians must recognize on some level that this doesn’t make any sense at all, but they often turn a blind eye, giving way to the official teaching that is supposedly “the Word of God.” And what could be more advantageous for the Devil than people believing his lies are the Word of God? This is exactly what probably really drove Adam & Eve out of Paradise, and keeps the world in a deplorable state today, the most destructive beliefs today (namely Carnism and Statism, more on these shortly) being based on false morality. So we shouldn’t be surprised that this was the real deception that led to the “fall of Man,” since we can see it is what has been behind all the violence and slavery ever since, through to today.

To ignore the falsehood, irrationality, and immorality, (the Toxic Trio, always found in Evil/Satan’s ideas) of a story that makes God out to be an immoral tempter promoting an amoral/unconscientious society, and simply, as many Christians do, rationalize these major problems away by saying the whole story was just about “disobedience to God being a sin,” is wrongly ignoring the immoral, irrational and blasphemous nature of the story, and in so doing, ironically does no obedience or service to God at all, it actually serves the Enemy. God & Jesus commanded us to love one another, and love is of course the highest Good, so we need that knowledge of Good constantly in our lives; we actually need to become experts in that Knowledge, knowing what the minute details of it are. And likewise we need to know what is the opposite of Love/Good, which is Evil, so that we can avoid it. The Knowledge of Good & Evil is absolutely necessary in order to be in obedience to God, yet this Devilishly corrupted story tells us the exact opposite. This is a hallmark of Satanic thought, not only is it untrue, it’s the exact opposite of the truth, thereby doing the most damage to those that believe in it, and those that the believer effects with their misguided actions.

“Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14)

“Turn away from evil! Do what is right! Then you will enjoy lasting security.” (Psalm 37:27)

It is certainly the Devil, not God, that doesn’t want us to have the true Knowledge of Good & Evil, because a crucial part of that Knowledge is knowing that he exists! The Devil is most effective when people don’t think such an evil force is real; as the old saying goes, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn’t exist.” Adam & Eve surely lost Paradise not becausethey knew the difference between right and wrong, but rather because they didn’t know any longer; they listened to the lies of the Devil who stayed on the Tree of Knowledge to corrupt the truth of Good & Evil with false morality. (And the blame being put all on Eve/Women as it in the mainstream version of the story is another obvious distortion, this one aligned with sexism and patriarchy.) Supporters of this backwards ideology/paradigm are clearly the authors of the Old Testament story of Adam & Eve, not a Divine and loving omniscient intelligence. This backwards ideology has also resulted in a backwards culture; the true lifestyle of Adam & Eve matches the perspective of Anarcho-naturism (e.g. free of government and taboos against nakedness), which is basically the opposite of American society. The world is indeed “upside down.”

Another point to make this even more obvious: Why did Adam & Eve become ashamed of their nakedness after eating of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? If we are made in the “image of God” why would our naked bodies be something shameful?? That’s saying that God is shameful and so is His Creation! (Again that’s Satanism, not true Christianity!) Therefore it makes more sense that it was fruit poisoned with lies that they were eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that’s why they became ashamed; they no longer knew our nakedness was good and natural, their sense of right and wrong had been reversed, which is exactly what the Devil’s main goal is for humanity, and what he still tries to accomplish daily through constantly deceiving people with lies.

The popular nonsense story of Adam & Eve is an example of Orwellian propaganda, saying the good is evil and the evil is good. When we accept others claims of what’s right and wrong, especially from society’s official “authorities,” even when it defies common sense, we allow ourselves to be complicit with destructive policies, ideology and actions that cause massive harm to others and our environment. What comes to my mind right away as big examples of that are: a) Going along with the propaganda delivered by the mass media concerning 9/11/2001 (read David Ray Griffin’s books on 9/11 for starters on that topic), b) Election fraud (read Fooled Again by Mark Crispin Miller for starters on elections), c) “Justifications” for killing countless civilians in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, d) GMOs being deemed “safe” (they’re not!), e) Vaccines (also definitely not safe!), f) and Radiation Exposure from modern technology. When we allow rulers to tell us what’s right (e.g. the war) and what’s wrong (e.g. dissent), we voluntarily allow the disempowerment of our minds and bodies, we allow for lies to cloud our comprehension of the true reality, we become sheep led by wolves.

“Thieves, robbers, murderers and cheats, who commit crimes recognized by themselves and everyone else as evil, serve as an example of what ought not to be done, and deter others from similar crimes. But those who commit the same thefts, robberies, murders, and other crimes, disguising them under all kinds of religious or scientific or humanitarian justifications, as all landowners, merchants, manufacturers, and government officials do, provoke others to imitation, and so do harm not only to those who are directly the victims of their crimes, but to thousands and millions of men whom they corrupt by obliterating their sense of the distinction between right and wrong.”

– Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 343

The Slavery of Animals & Humans; A Reality Denied, to Our Own Detriment, for Centuries

Speaking of wolves, another big example of confusion concerning Good & Evil that needs a lot more attention on the societal level is the issue of wild vs. domesticated animals; there is a huge difference between the two, and that difference isn’t most importantly concerning physical attributes, it’s concerning origins, ethics, and karmic consequence. As for that, firstly there are the major environmental and health consequences of domesticated animals used for food; the massive exploitation of farm animals, and the coinciding mass consumption and use of animal products, a.k.a. Carnism, is a major destructive force on this planet. Carnism brings hellish suffering and violence to billions of animals every year, along with contributing to severe environmental damage and major diseases including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Secondly there is another related widespread example of this lost Knowledge of Good & Evil that concerns other domesticated animals, the ones people don’t eat or otherwise exploit, but keep as pets, e.g. dogs. The hundreds of millions of dogs people live with (or near) throughout the world create daily disturbance, distraction and dependency, but most people don’t seem to fully acknowledge that it is a negative disturbance and distraction, and don’t recognize the karmic reason for why it must be negative. They don’t understand that all the ways they cause disturbance are forms of negative feedback from Nature, i.e. it is the operation of Natural/Karmic Law stemming from the fact that domesticated animals are unnatural and originated from man’s selfish enslavement of wild animals, which is a clear Evil. Some may immediately object: “You think puppies are evil?! Give me a break. Dogs bring a lot of joy into people’s lives.” This sort of knee-jerk response distorts what I’m pointing out, and is tremendously short-sighted. Yes dogs do bring some comfort and laughter to people, but overall their effect is negative (and that’s because they don’t fit into Nature/Creation), and overall is what really matters. And even the apparent good they bring is not really good because it’s an inferior substitute for natural, principled and harmless sources of comfort (e.g. God, Family, Friends, Nature, Healthy Food, etc.), and so dogs (and other pets) actually get in the way of the real good from taking place; this getting in the way of the good is another bad aspect of their existence. Getting back to the crucial truth that coincides with that reasoning: origins matter, and if something originated from something evil, it will inevitably have harmful effects, because that’s an inherent and eternal characteristic of evil. You may think that the fact that dogs came from enslaved wild animals is no longer relevant, just as you may think the fact that government is founded on aggression is irrelevant (that is if you will even see/admit that), but in both cases the fact remains that the presence of evil is definitely not irrelevant concerning the status of society. For example the “good” that government does, like sometimes providing some food for the poor, is again, similarly to the “good” provided by pets, an inferior (and destructive) substitute that gets in the way of the superior natural and principled way from being dominant, in this case natural and free communities unburdened by monetary-slavery (due to the land control, cost and taxation imposed by government), voluntarily helping those in need. There is no “necessary evil” in order to do good in the world, and no evil is ever benign, evil always undermines good, that’s why it’s evil! If you want to make the world a better place then your mission should be to systematically eliminate all forms of evil, like aggression and slavery, which, by the way, government is based on and continually engages in. “The tyrant calls for sweet wine from sour grapes,” but it can never happen. What analysis like this of the slavery of animals and humans reveals is that there really is no grey area, things are ultimately either good or evil, and although good things (e.g. neighbors voluntarily sharing with one another) may occur alongside something evil (e.g. living within a social-system that is a form of slavery), that doesn’t mean that social-systems (or pets) are both Good & Evil, they are actually just evil, and some good exists despite of them, not because of them. The Devil is indeed in the details, and keeping that in mind lets return to the issue of domesticated/enslaved animals. Pets are in a position of dependency that brings along with it a lot of suffering generation after generation, and also brings endless disturbance and distraction to humanity (humanity, who by the way, should be focused on higher things than how cute a puppy or kitten is; wild animal babies are cute too, but they don’t bring all the problems domesticated animals do, because they are part of the original Nature/Creation/Ecology). The fault does not lie with the individual dogs themselves, they are not evil, their origin is evil; they are actually the victims of the enslavement and genetic manipulation of their ancestors. Because of this enslavement and manipulation, dogs are now dependent on humans, and this dependency brings with it a lot of suffering, like the daily myriad of abuses by humans, and the daily massive number of killings (a.k.a. euthanasia) at animal shelters/”control-centers” worldwide. The real solution is to end all breeding and establish many domesticated animal sanctuaries (serving vegan dog food), to contain and minimize their disturbance/destruction, and to also give them more enjoyable lives. Whenever we are in denial of the over-arching reality, and instead get fixated on the minor positives, we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture, we’ve fallen into thought that is untrue, irrational and unethical.

Can you clearly discern the difference in Quality (another aspect of the Knowledge of Good & Evil) between the lovely sounds of wild birds chirping and whale calls, vs. the contrasting disturbing sounds of dogs barking, roosters crowing and chickens squawking? It’s no coincidence that it’s the domesticated animals that have a totally downgraded presence physically and energetically compared with wild animals. The reason the domesticated animals are of a lesser Quality and bring much more disturbance than wild animals is because their origin is an evil; and their never-ending disturbance is a manifestation of that evil foundation via Natural/Karmic Law (namely the Law that slavery disallows peace & harmony). The crucial point that must be understood is that origins matter, and their origin is an evil one, because slavery is an evil, and slavery and evil always cause disturbances in the world. Lacking this Knowledge of Karmic Law (i.e. of Good & Evil), people perpetuate the problem, breeding more dogs (and cats), creating more disturbance, distraction and dependency. (They are dependent on us, but we also become enslaved in a way to them because of that dependency.) Every day walking an animal that is the product of the enslavement of wolves on a leash down a concrete city street where you pick up their shit in your hand with a plastic bag, is a good encapsulation of just how far mankind has traveled from the gate of the Garden of Eden. That is not what we are supposed to be doing on this Earth, it is not something we should be proud of or accept as normal; we are wasting our time entangled with the unprincipled enterprise of animal domestication, time that could be much better utilized seeking the full potential of ourselves and society. Distractions like pets are not good or even neutral; by becoming a dominant focus in your life they are distracting you from doing what’s really important, thereby undermining your progress in becoming your full potential, and that’s not good at all. Most people think the fact that dogs came from the enslavement of wild animals is no longer relevant, but this is completely false; the karmic disturbances we face continuously with domesticated animals is proof of this. On the metaphysical level this disturbance must be continuous because otherwise it would make God unjust; it would make it so that this Creation can accommodate slavery in a harmonious way, which would be an evil creation. There can’t be a time limit on how long slavery causes disturbance (e.g. only 10 years after the caging/enslaving of wolves), that would be arbitrary, irrational an lacking moral integrity. When I make this point most people don’t really get it… I don’t know what to do other than repeat that this is no minor point at all; most of the disturbances we experience in life are actually rooted in the slavery of animals and people, you just have to have the understanding of how certain animals, industries, etc. came into being in order to see it and get the karma of it. Most of the disturbances in life! Therefore if we abandoned everything connected to slavery we could have world peace! No big deal?! And what is a lifestyle free of the slavery of animals and humans? Sovereign veganic homesteads, making up voluntary natural communities. You can see this for yourself; living in a home in a beautiful countryside with a beautiful garden full of the best tasting food, the best colors and scents of flowers, full of tranquility, is a way of life in stark contrast to that of the city-dweller. And what disrupts the greater peace in the countryside? What prevents it from being a complete return to Eden/Paradise? Things like: a) barking dogs, b) cars/trucks/buses, c) machinery (e.g. chainsaws, weed-wackers, leaf-blowers), and ALL of these things only exist because of the enslavement of animals and humans! Yes, I know the connection of dogs to slavery is easier to understand, but also try to see that those machines would not exist if it were not for the concentration of wealth/power/resources to the few, made possible only by non-optional social-systems of enslavement. If you think this is far-fetched I don’t what else to tell you, it’s actually not that complicated once you understand what slavery is, and that everything that is a product of slavery must produce disturbances, forever; it’s the basic dynamic of karmic law in operation. We need to end our spiritual blindness and recognize a life full of constant disturbances is not “just the way it is,” it’s a result of the evil of slavery entrenched in this statist and carnist society.

Freeing ourselves from the negative karma that comes with entanglement with the slavery of animals (for food, clothing, entertainment, or pets), we can then more readily begin the crucial work of freeing ourselves from the entanglement of the continued slavery of humans; this is what Veganarchism is essentially about, although State propaganda and agent-provocateuring repeatedly seek to associate it with terrorism, so as to confuse the public as to what is really Good (freedom for animals and humans), and what is really Evil (Statism, which is a form of slavery); so, people end up supporting slavery and dismissing freedom, a big victory for the Devil. An often ignored fact: Carnism & Statism are the two largest means of violence that humans participate in. Carnism is the means for killing hundreds of billions of animals every year, and violence by government, called democide, has killed more people than anything else in human history and continues to be a source of massive suffering to this day. Yet indoctrinated people will quickly retort with something like “Eating animals is natural, and that was past government, today it’s not that bad,” rationalizing the massive harm that continues to take place as a result of Carnism and Statism. Therefore it’s no wonder that these two ideologies have been indoctrinated most heavily into society, because if people accept them, then human society will be kept down in karmic bondage no matter what other good works are performed; it operates on the spiritual level like usury adding money to the Devil’s bake account every minute.

Another wrong path humanity goes on regularly worth mentioning is getting caught up with the toxic corporate “news” and the “entertainment” industry; both are absolutely filled with toxic underlying messages/worldviews/beliefs that are very disempowering, along with disturbing images, etc. Pretty much all the content of major news outlets and every major movie and TV show nowadays is leading you away from peace, love, and truth in some way, but it takes Knowledge of Good & Evil in order to see that. Some of the most popular TV shows nowadays (e.g. “The Walking Dead” and “Game of Thrones”) are also the most sadistic, containing some of the most disturbing situations and imagery imaginable, yet people say “Oh it’s just a show,” as if that nullifies the sadism. Also movies more and more are presented as “kid-friendly” (e.g. “Pans Labyrinth,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “Hot Tub Time Machine 2”) but also contain extremely disturbing violent imagery, and even throw in patriotic propaganda to boot. And of course there is the more blatantly sadistic horror movies for those that have really gone off the deep end… Why do people watch sadistic violence as “entertainment?” Only because their sense of Good & Evil has been so warped that they see nothing really wrong with it; only because they have become more thoroughly deceived by the Devil, and have been taken even further away from a pathway to peace and salvation. If you think there’s nothing really evil in mass-media/entertainment, and that it doesn’t have a majorly negative effect on your life when you take it in, you’re just plain wrong; a very good place to start looking more deeply is the work of Lenon Honor.

Additionally, if you spend much of your time also thinking of cultural pop icons, luxury consumer goods, etc., you are allowing yourself in those ways to also be distracted from where real meaning and satisfaction can be found in life (namely through harmony with inner & outer Nature). By watching this toxic media you are allowing yourself to be disempowered by those who seek greater control over humanity, those who are much happier if you are an unaware. disturbed, alcohol/pharmaceutical-taking consumer who never questions societal norms, or speaks out against unjust authority or the lies in mainstream religion.

Jesus & Salvation

“To worship the Lord is to hate evil. I hate pride, arrogance and every wicked way, and fraudulent speech.” (Proverbs 8:13)

“Behold, the Lord is coming with myriads of His holy ones to execute judgment on everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of every ungodly act of wickedness and every harsh word spoken against Him by ungodly sinners.” (Jude 1:14-15)

“Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.'” (Leviticus 19:1-2)

“Then Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.'” (Matthew 18:3)

This intentional misdirection of our understanding of Truth has also been accomplished through the distortion of the teachings of Jesus. Many Christians today spread the idea that by simply saying a magical prayer (The “Sinner’s Prayer“) of allegiance to Jesus, we will be “saved.” Not only is this teaching amoral, it’s ironically more Pagan/Wiccan, even more Satanic, than Christian. This misguided “Pauline Christianity” actually directly contradicts the teachings of Jesus. Jesus himself spoke against this exact practice when he said: “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter” (Matthew 7:21). So why is it that the numerous aforementioned Christians overlook this? Could it be because it’s a lot easier to recite a prayer than do the will of God? Jesus made it clear multiple times that it is much more difficult than just reciting a prayer in order to be saved: “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way” (Matthew 7:13). Complimenting this, he also said: “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved… I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness” (John 10:9-10). And how do we enter through that “narrow gate”? By saying a magical prayer that’s in a pamphlet that someone gave us on the street? No, sorry, it’s not that easy, hence the “narrow.” To pass through this narrow gate requires that we love Jesus and what he represented, and he said we love him when wefollow his commandments (John 14:21), namely his “Greatest Commandments” to: Love God, Others and Ourselves equally. This is no easy task, it’s calling for our full spiritual maturation and perfection. We are here “for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).Jesus said “Unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” (Matthew 5:20) and, in concluding his Sermon on the Mount, said “Be ye therefore perfect” (Matthew 5:48). “Be perfect” means following his Greatest Commandments perfectly, which means being in full alignment with comprehensive love. “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” (1 John 3:6) [More on this practice of comprehensive love here]. This is a far cry from just reading a magical prayer or having a blood sacrifice be your ticket to Heaven, and it is what getting in real right relationship with Jesus is about, a.k.a. “being in Jesus” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and eating of the “living bread of life” (John 6:51), that is still with us. This is also experienced as a saving Kairos window of opportunity (a.k.a. a Kairos Moment, “God Moment,” or “Nexus Point“), that opens repeatedly in our lives as a form of Grace, that again actually requires something more from us than the ability to read (surprised?) in order to realize its “fullness” (i.e. its great potential for good in our lives and the lives of others), it again requires that we follow the Greatest Commandments perfectly. This is being in right relationship with Jesus, and God: “Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). Another problem with this magical incantation “Christianity” is that it, like with the distorted Adam & Eve story, makes God out to be amoral, this Pauline doctrine also says love doesn’t matter to God! Again this is false, blasphemous and even satanic. In contrast, here’s some real truth, rationality and morality in the Bible:

“Therefore, listen to me, you men of understanding. Far be it from God to do wickedness, and from the Almighty to do wrong. For He pays a man according to his work, and makes him find it according to his way. Surely, God will not act wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.” (Job 34:10-12)

Just as the story of Adam & Eve was Devilishly distorted to actually prevent people from finding their way back to Paradise/Eden, so has Christianity been distorted to turn people in the opposite direction from the true path of spiritual salvation. Most Christians have been so heavily conditioned and indoctrinated that they just accept the nonsense of magical-incantation-salvation, and then try to rationalize it and make it legitimate, but always unsuccessfully, by reverting to dogmatic sayings detached from everyday reality. By making salvation all about a magical prayer to Jesus, and not at all about your actions on Earth, the real way to salvation has been covered up, resulting in many good-hearted people who are seeking to be good Christians being misled by Devilish doctrine. Magical-incantation/blood-sacrifice “Christianity,” along with bizarre and disturbing spiritual/demonic-possession “Christianity,” is unfortunately very pervasive and influential, yet most don’t recognize that it would actually be more fitting to call it a form of Satanism, based on lies, serving disempowerment/slavery more than empowerment/salvation.

Additionally, the popularity of comic-book characters like Superman show also how American Christian culture subconsciously accepts the idea that being saved (or combating injustice) doesn’t involve good works and serious maturation, so we might as well remain apathetic consumers. In the movie “Superman Returns” (2006), the references to Jesus are blatantly obvious, even the title brings to mind the Second Coming of Jesus, but these references serve to distort and steer people away from what Jesus’ teachings were actually about. Subliminally implanting the false association between Superman and Jesus, at one point in the movie Superman flies over the Earth in a clearly crucified position, and elsewhere in the movie he is also referred to as “My only son, sent to save humanity” by his other-worldly Father, and even refers to himself at one point as a savior when talking to Lois Lane: “You wrote that the world doesn’t need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one.” And what is humanity’s role in the story of Superman? Mainly a bystander, which is the key subliminal take-away prepared for the propagandized viewer/consumer. Superman isn’t telling people that their salvation is dependent on their alignment with the Greatest Commandments as Jesus did, no, the theme of Superman comic-books, video-games and movies is more subliminally making humanity out to be a bunch of worthless sinners who’s actions are pretty much irrelevant, which is exactly what the distorted story of Adam & Eve also does with its nonsense about “original sin” that we can’t escape from and the Knowledge of Good of Evil being of such no consequence that it is even forbidden. Are you clearly seeing the hidden core content of these nonsense stories now? Anti-love. Lies. Guess who that’s a trademark of? The Devil. We absolutely need the Knowledge of Good & Evil in order to restore Paradise on Earth, and we absolutely need to be comprehensively loving in order to find spiritual salvation, and so the teachings have been Devilishly altered to subliminally say the exact opposite, both stories fundamentally/subliminally saying that love doesn’t matter. This irrational and unloving belief that has corrupted Christianity is a prime example of a “house divided upon itself,” and a house (or mind) that is conflicted with itself does not progress.

Also consider, does making the crucifix the main symbol of Christianity make sense? We have Christians today kneeling before giant life-sized crucifixes in Church, and wearing necklaces that have a miniature crucifix with Jesus nailed to it, dying a slow and painful death, and this is supposed to inspire you to walk in his footsteps? Modern Christians meditate upon this image of torture day in and day out, and guess what? They don’t feel too motivated to go out and try to change the world, instead they feel disempowered, and revert to saying a magical incantation prayer for salvation. They forget about restoring Eden, forget about bringing Heaven to Earth, even though it is part of the Lord’s Prayer, the main way Jesus said we should pray, seeking to embody God’s Will. The subliminal message being spread by making the crucifix the point of focus is: If you are compassionate and resist injustice, this is what will happen to you, you will be persecuted, suffer and die. And yet Christians today, as they’ve been taught, say that it symbolizes “How he died for our sins,” again giving a magical get-out-jail-free-card, this time through blood sacrifice, that doesn’t require your own perfection in love. Blood sacrifice; do you know what that practice is a main tenant of, as is magical incantation? Satanism. Mainstream Christianity revolves around the two main practices of Satanism! That shows how powerful indoctrination/propaganda is, supported by strong belief in “authority” being the holders of Truth, it can have Christians practicing Satanism and not even think twice about it! Making this backwardness even more clear, the day Jesus was tortured and died is bizarrely called “Good Friday,” which subliminally praises the cruelty of that day, just as making an idol of the crucifix does. The fact that he was tortured and killed was not good, it was revealing the evil of Statism, the evil of humans ruling over other humans. That exposing of evil, that condemning of evil, is good, but what happened to him was not good, to think so is to miss the whole point of his sacrifice!Exposing evil is good, but in doing so that doesn’t make the evil good; this common sense crucial point is unfortunately lost today on most Christians; the Devil is once again in the details. Not making this crucial distinction allows the Devil to misuse the whole event for his purposes, turning the death of Jesus into a blood sacrifice, which is a completely worthless and immoral practice. Many Christians are supporting the equivalent of the ignorant barbarism of animal sacrifice that has been done to “appease the gods and atone for sins,” and that’s the exact kind of bunk religion that Jesus, and Samuel (below), was pointing humanity away from!

Samuel replied, “What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22)

And making this point even more clear:

“For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4)

“’What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?’ says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.” (Isaiah 1:11)

Again what has happened is actually Devilish distortion of Divine truth, distortion that, not coincidentally, once again is anti-Love, and pro-lies (in this case the lie that by killing an innocent person or animal you will please God and be forgiven of any sins you committed). This blood sacrifice perspective is not at all what Jesus was about, and it should not at all be promoted by Christina churches, it is evil doctrine that has undermined the good/true teachings, and there is no compatibility between the two; the evil needs to be full purged in order for Christianity to be realigned with its purely good origin. What was empowering was not the torture and death of Jesus, but his resurrection, showing us that although these evil principalities and powers may harm us, they can not harm our soul, there is life after death. And what did Jesus say and show concerning those powers, those official “authority” figures that slandered him constantly and then called for his crucifixion? He showed the evil of the ruling class who “hated him without reason” (John 15:25) to the point of torturing and murdering him, a death he went to willingly so that the needed clarifying and liberating crucial Truth for humanity could be made: “The prince of this world [i.e. Caesar and his subordinates then, States altogether today] now stands condemned” (John 16:11). How often those words are ignored! And why? Indoctrination by the State, its schooling and mass-media propaganda outlets.

The whole dialogue transcribed in John 18:28 – 19:16 between the Jewish High Priests and Pilate shows democracy in action, it shows that majority rule is no assurance of righteousness at all, that in fact it could choose to even murder the very embodiment of pure Love, of Divinity; perhaps the worst crime imaginable! This obvious and profound demonstration by Jesus (and God who directed him) of how governance is wickedness at its core has been lost on most Christians who have been heavily indoctrinated to believe Statism is necessary and good, when it is in fact an evil (a form of slavery) that has been corrupting human society for centuries, the leading cause of mass-murder and destruction throughout history. Jesus, through sacrificing his own bodily life, was actually pointing to the crucial truth that having no rulers, i.e. anarchism, would be the good that could prevent such an evil as his own crucifixion. Remember Moses led the Hebrews out of the bondage of the Egyptian State (Exodus 3:7, 10), and the freed people lived without a ruler/king for three centuries, i.e. they were an anarchist society, until later corruption set in. “In those days there was no king in Israel. As for everybody, what was right in his own eyes [i.e. what their conscience said] he was accustomed to do” (Judges 17:6, 21:25). Likewise, Jesus opposed the social-system of the world he lived in, a system that was, and evidently still is, ultimately controlled by Satan; that’s why Satan was able to offer it to Jesus as a temptation (Matthew 4:8-9). Jesus said he had come “to proclaim to the captives a release, and sight to the blind [i.e. awareness to the indoctrinated], to set at liberty the oppressed” (Luke 4:19). He was clearly against human rulership (Matthew 23:8-12), and as already mentioned he refused the Devil’s temptation to be made a ruler himself (Matthew 4:8-10), and also refused as well to be made a king by his followers (John 6:15). Additionally Christian scholars have identified State/political power as “the Beast” spoken of in the Book of Revelation. Christian Anarchism actually makes perfect sense, though the indoctrinated will immediately object; if you find yourself objecting to this idea now reconsider the crucial referenced points I’ve made above, and perhaps also read Christian Anarchist books like That Holy Anarchistby Mark Van Steenwyk and the many articles on the subject that can be found online to get a better understanding of why it’s not at all the “crazy talk” it is slandered to be. To think anarchism is an evil is a big example of how the true Knowledge of Good & Evil has been lost; once again what is truly good and of crucial importance (e.g. freedom and equality, a.k.a. egalitarian anarchism), is deemed terrible and is continually marginalized.

Yeshua of Nazareth showed the way that humanity could be saved within and without, but he did not save it for us, which is obvious, since there was not worldwide revolutionary positive change after his death. Liberation Theology has been exceptional in recognizing this, as has the perspectives expressed in books like Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action by David Ray Griffin & Saving Christianity from Empire by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. Rather than Christians focusing on the bunk dogma of useless magical prayers and blood sacrifice, the world needs people furthering real positive change, resisting tyranny, hypocrisy, corruption, within and without, in numbers that would be great enough so that Earth would actually become Heavenly. The tyrants of the world cannot crucify every rebel, and the Devil can not fully posses every seeker; the only reason that evil/injustice/fascism/tyranny continues is because not enough people recognize it firstly, and become active in resisting it secondly. A Liberation Theology view of the world recognizes the slavery that continues to exist, a perspective mirrored in the book 7th Seal: Hidden Wisdom Unveiled:

“Are the Romans in actuality alive and well today, continuing to suppress the greater truths, effecting the prevention of the resurgence of a spiritually aware and soul aligned civilization?”

The Disempowerment Agenda

Basically, it has always been the few oppressing the many, therefore it can be seen as a problem of actualizing, or empowering, the masses (that means you, unless you support oppression/destruction), who have been tricked into believing false mythology and ideology that deliberately disempowers them, along with being subject to more direct physical tools of disempowerment like poverty/overworking/lack of free time, hunger, sickness and injustice. All of this serves the destructive status-quo paradigm, it gives it the power to continue on.

An ultra-clear example of this was with the Bush Administration telling us that they will protect us from the “evildoers,” and hoped we wouldn’t do any critical thinking, or care that they were violating the Bill of Rights, rigging the elections, etc. Bush, Inc. hoped we wouldn’t take the next step after seeing through their deceptions, actually resisting their assault on our freedoms, environment, health and society. They sent the message “Just trust Big Brother and everything will be okay…” In this way evil men make themselves as a savior figure, disempower and misleading anyone who believes in them; they are false gods doing the work of the Devil. In the book Jesus and Empirethe author Richard Horsley writes: “In the Roman imperial world, the ‘gospel’ was the good news of Caesar having established peace and security for the world. Caesar was the ‘savior’ who had brought ‘salvation’ to the whole world.” The parallel between the Roman and American Empire is very poignant in this sense: Bush/Cheney claimed (and now Obama/Biden) to be saving us from the terrorists; we must recognize when history repeats in this destructive and deceptive way. Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On Americadescribed the modern American Fundamentalist Christianity that is aligned with the Neo-conservative movement as “essentially about disempowerment” in an interview with Amy Goodman on her Democracy Now! radio program (democracynow.org 02/19/07). This is a key point, as I previously stated; both empire, and religion serving empire, function mostly to disempower the populace through various means so resistance is kept to minimal levels. Gloria Steinem writes in her book Revolution from Within that self-help/new age books often have “an important message about the worth of each human being, but with little mention of the external structures that undermine this worth in order to assure their own authority.” These external structures that disempower people in order to insure the continued dominance of the status-quo are too often overlooked as somehow separate from the issue of personal liberation, instead of being recognized and named as the barriers that they are.

In the book Great Mystics & Social Justice: Walking on the Two Feet of Love, Susan Rakoczy unsheathes the false dichotomy between personal and social transformation that many modern Christians, Buddhists, philosophers, spiritual people, etc. unfortunately accept:

“Two temptations are enticing. One is to plunge into activism without a spiritual grounding. The other, especially insidious, is to take a deep breath, close the doors of the churches on the problems of society, and focus on a private experience of religion. For some, a “Jesus and me” religiosity is very satisfying since it allows them to seek personal holiness without attention to those outside their religious circle. This, however, is a corruption of the gospel, whose basic principle is love of God and love of neighbor.”

Back to Eden

We are told heaven is the joyful and peaceful place in which woman and man live in harmony with Nature and are immersed in God’s presence; and this presence is that of the best of friends, and so doing the Divine Will is not oppressive at all, it is in fact continually supportive and liberating. Speaking of God’s Will, what would this Will be? Would it be for Adam & Eve to carry out trivial assignments and duties, like a king’s servant? Or would it make more sense that it would be to bring peace, love and justice to their life and surroundings? God’s Will would certainly consist of the latter if we are to remain consistent with belief in a loving God, who doesn’t tempt us to do evil as the Devil does, but guides and encourages us to do Good. We can discover even today that God’s Will, love, peace, and justice are all inseparable, and are inseparable from human happiness. And in order to align with this righteous Will we need to know the difference between Good & Evil, we need to eat the pure “apple.”

Martin Luther King Jr. ate the apple when he declared segregation to be an evil, Gandhi ate the pure “apple” when he declared the British occupation of India to be an evil, along with countless other examples of people declaring and facing real evil, and by their so doing, humanity progressed. So the pure “apple” is in reality our inner conscience given to us by the Creator, which we discover through bringing our attention inward and having empathy and compassion for what we see externally. This practice, which is best summed up by the Greatest Commandments of Jesus, is disrupted by countless distractions and disturbances like corporate news, advertising and “entertainment;” we are being constantly turned away from Divine principles and Flow, which serves the status-quo paradigm, which itself serves the malevolent force called the Devil, or Mara, in the Buddhist tradition.

The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path also perfectly compliments and expounds on this practice of aligning with the Good and rejecting the Evil, it describes further what is means to be eating the metaphorical apple. Yet, like Christianity, Buddhism has also been corrupted; modern Buddhism is full of post-modern nihilism with a completely unjustified emphasis on the doctrine of Emptiness/no-Self, that the Buddha himself warned would lead one astray if taken as ultimate truth. Modern “Buddhists” have done exactly what was warned against, and have strayed into a non-dualist, non-judgmental perspective on the world. I see this self-contradiction constantly in Zen teachings for example; there will be a saying about how there is no good or bad in the world, followed by a passage praising kindness and compassion as the most important things in the world. This is contradictory; if compassion is good, than hate is bad, and therefore there is Good and Bad in the world! This is so obvious I’m surprised I even have to explain/argue it to anybody! This is the same contradiction found in mainstream Christianity that tells us good works are meaningless, and only by saying a certain prayer and attending church regularly will one find salvation, and even then only in the afterlife (the current life being regarded as a “lost-cause”). Again the same distortions are at play, the same disempowering subliminal messages that are anti-Love, anti-Truth, and anti-Revolution. These wicked manipulations of the minds of women and men undermine the work that needs to be done, the actions necessary in the real world to ensure our freedom, peace and happiness.

Eating the (pure) Apple Prevents the Disease of Becoming a Toxic Personality

When someone’s consciousness is dominantly possessed by the malevolent force, they become a “toxic personalty”; their behavior is then consistently anti-Love, anti-Truth and anti-Progress/Revolution, and so they become diametrically opposed to the Divine Will/Flow, because the evil energy (the Devil) that has taken them over is diametrically opposed to that Will/Flow. Someone who is dominantly possessed by it may seem fine if you only interact with them briefly, but if you spend more time with them you’ll begin to notice, especially concerning things that actually matter (because that’s what can do the most harm), they will fall into a negative mindset that spouts lies, irrationality and unkindness (again, the Toxic Trio that is the trademark of Evil thought) in various forms, over and over, and will never really acknowledge having harmed anyone for doing so; they will do things that disempower, disturb and dishearten people, all while doing so “innocently,” because to acknowledge the evil done equates to the Devil outing himself, which he never wants to do, because that would undermine his work and goal of doing the most damage possible. In other words when you’re interacting with a toxic personality you are interacting with Evil (what M. Scott Peck calls “People of the Lie”), which is comprehensively bad-natured, the complete opposite of being comprehensively loving, which is what the Divine is, that thankfully we can also interact with and align with instead. But in order to align with the good we also have to be aware of the evil, so that we don’t engage with the latter. Remember it’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you won’t acknowledge that there is a malevolent force that can influence you (usually using mental/emotional stress/tension to support that influence), then you’re sure to become an unwitting tool of the Devil, which will undermine your life and be a negative influence on all those you interact with as well. We have to get into a healthy stress-free state of mind, and then eat the true/pure apple, i.e. make decisions based on the Healthy Trio of Truth, Rationality and Morality, and then we can become fully aligned with the supportive, loving and empowering Divine Will.

Truth & Propaganda

Most people naturally behave in decent ways in everyday life, despite the strong influences discouraging that; our inner nature is Good and is always with us, despite the negativity that usually covers and surrounds it. This is why propaganda and misinformation is the main tool of the supporters of any destructive system/paradigm; they have to mislead people into doing wrong, because wrong-doing isn’t what people would naturally tend to do on their own, if they weren’t being manipulated/misled. So in dealing with this “Age of Manipulation” that we live in, our focus in activism and personal life needs to be on what the full truth is, truth that includes the right or wrong of what’s being evaluated.In order to eat the pure “apple” in the real world, to act knowledgeably using our conscience, we need the most factual crucial information we can find, so we can know what’s Good, align with that, and also know what’s Evil, so we can reject that (the same process that we need to do internally concerning ideas that come to our mind, which can be either Good or Evil). The main purpose of propaganda is to mix fact with fiction in order to undermine people’s ability to act on their conscience rightly. Propaganda, of the external or internal variety, is designed to use our own conscience against us by instilling belief in lies concerning what’s good; examples include appealing to our compassionate nature through Orwellian slogans like “Support Our Troops,” “The War on Terror,” “No Child Left Behind,” etc. The crucial information we need to evaluate external phenomena with our conscience is not coming from government or the mass media, so where do we find it? How do we see through the lies and misinformation and find crucial truth? For the political/social truth, the short and practical answer is truthful independent media/books/documentaries/speakers, etc. and one’s personal investigation. For the spiritual truth, whatever your personal practice may be, your own personal investigation and experience should be the authority. Aligned with this, the Buddha said repeatedly to trust your own experience to see if his Noble Eightfold Path is effective (basically a path of Comprehensive Loving Attention, just like what the Greatest Commandments are about), and to not take his word for it, but to try it and see for yourself.

Inner & Outer Revolution

Truth has great power; when it is revealed it is a force in itself, because it activates our compassionate inner nature. Satyagraha, a term Gandhi coined for his overall activist strategy, is translated as “truth-force” and/or “insistence upon the truth.” Satya (the truth), + Agraha (to insist upon), = Satyagraha.We must each become a Satyagrahi (a practitioner of Satyagraha), in our personal lives as well in our sociopolitical reality, in order for there to be genuine and lasting progress.

I believe it is a 50/50 effort, internal and external revolution is needed; rejecting the destructive status-quo while practicing a path to enlightenment simultaneously. Because life is both personal and ecological, the inner and the outer, and we need to work for the progress of both to find satisfaction, and reduce our own suffering, while we help reduce the suffering of others simultaneously. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, and the Buddha all emphasized non-violence as the wisest and most practically beneficial behavior to adopt for the personal and the environmental. We need to center our personal lives and our society around non-violence/Ahimsa. Bush/Cheney, and all other statists throughout history, represent the exact opposite, the foundation of their power resting on aggression and slavery, producing never-ending harmful and destructive policies, furthering suffering, anguish and disharmony on Earth, as well as sabotaging our spiritual journey towards peace, wisdom and happiness.

This so-called “elite” sometimes use more direct methods than mythology and propaganda to disempower the masses, like sickness/disease being spread intentionally, or even assassination of social-justice leaders; this is a matter of historical fact. However we can abandon worry and fear over any of this through a firm belief, based on real experiences, that there is life after death, that the Creator is Good, and that saving Grace is real. That said, we should give attention and energy toward the things concerning our well-being that we do have a lot of control over usually, like our health. Ill-health is extremely disempowering of course, so physical fitness and health is a necessary component of the path to empowerment/peace/happiness; good health is also needed for active resistance to fascism, oppression, etc. Not taking care of your body is another type of behavior that supports the continuation of the status-quo; there will be no revolution if all the revolutionaries are sick and tired. Maybe that’s part of the reason why the powers-that-be have really done nothing to improve healthcare in America, and instead support backward medical treatments (like chemotherapy), and also support industries that put toxins/radiation in out air, water and food.

On top of this there is the criminal monetary system run by the corporate-run Federal Reserve that is allowed to stay in place, driving us further and further into stress-inducing debt (see the film Money Masters for more on that), and the official story on the events of 9/11/01 used as an excuse for illegal occupations which have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and for the torture, the illegal detentions, etc. That bullshit story has been used as “justification” to label dissenters of statist policy “terrorists” as well, once again flipping what’s truly Good and what’s truly Evil (and that’s why 9/11 Truth is so important!). This false labeling of individuals as terrorists has unsurprisingly been expanded to include environmental and animal rights activists, and this phenomenon has even been given a name by activists: “The Green Scare.” This title is of course referring to the “Red Scare” fear mongering police-state measures of the 1950’s which the current politicians/officials are repeating in the 21st century in a new form. What is of extra concern here is that environmentalism and animal rights happen to be the most important issues concerning the saving of our planet’s ecosystem, and hence, us, since the livestock and fishing industries are the top contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, ocean ecology collapse and fresh-water pollution. So we are told those working for true good are evil people, again a reversed morality, designed again to turn us away from the true Knowledge of Good and Evil that can prevent us from departing Paradise and allowing the Earth to become a wasteland instead.

We need to stand against wickedness when we become aware of it, we need to “eat the apple,” or “the red pill” (to use Matrix terminology), and share it with others. We must hold some conviction in order to do this however and have factual knowledge to base our convictions on. Because of massive conditioning, especially through false “new-age” teachings (e.g. “There is no such thing as evil,” “You can’t have the good without the bad”) today it is very unpopular to speak of right and wrong, it is very uncool especially among young Americans. And in academic circles, non-dualism, or post-modern moral-relativism, is the fall-back position for many “intellectuals” who deconstruct every argument and then stand for nothing, certainly not social justice. I have found that if you hold any convictions (even very altruistic ones) oftentimes status-quo supporters will immediately (and absurdly) compare you to those who hold convictions that are clearly wrong, like serial-killers or nazis. This is really dumb; pointing out a crazy view doesn’t mean there isn’t any sane one.

Conscientiousness

“Learn to me guided by your conscience, the divine discriminative power within you.”

– Paramahansa Yogananda, Where There Is Light, p.53

So if ultimately it is our conscience that shows us the difference between right and wrong, some might say then, that morality is completely subjective and relative, different for each individual. If this were completely true however, how would we progress together as a society? Aren’t there actually some “core values” that most sane individuals would agree are right, like slavery and aggression are bad, and freedom and compassion are good? Concerning personal interaction, some actions are necessarily always bad, but it depends on the circumstance (e.g. Lying is usually bad, but lying to a nazi about the location of a Jew is of course not bad). That does not mean that morality is always relative however; the truth is one should hold a Relative Absolutism, that is, certain actions, in certain situations, are either 100% right or wrong, like the examples highlighted in this essay. We must consult our conscience and the truth of the situation on a continual basis (eat the pure “apple”), through mindful awareness, and decide what is the least harmful and most just action (or non-action) to make. The Buddha called such action that leads to Liberation “skillful” or “wholesome.” Some actions in certain situations are certainly more positive and skillful than others, and there is indeed a way for consistent discernment, that does not accept a completely “non-dualist” perspective on human behavior:

“Skillful actions are those that create the causes for happiness, such as actions motivated by loving-friendliness and compassion. Any action that comes from a mind not currently filled with greed, hatred, or delusion brings happiness to the doer and to the receiver. Such an action is therefore skillful or right.”

– Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness by Bhante H. Gunaratana, p. 28

Our conscience is most clearly perceived when we are fully in the present moment; being fully in the Now also removes us from the disempowering/negative/false thought (a.k.a. the influence of “Mara” & “the Pain Body”), allowing us to be “aware of our awareness” which allows our peaceful (even blissful) inner nature to be experienced and followed. There really is Power in the Now (as explained well by Ekhart Tolle in his books The Power of Now and Stillness Speaks), which can counter all the disempowerment I’ve been discussing, this is explained in more depth in my Liberation Practice page.

And if the pure apple/conscience reveals the differentiation between violence and nonviolence in all acts and behavior, then ceasing from harm is the first stage in becoming skilled in the ways of the opposite of harming: healing and giving pleasure. Practices such as massage therapy, nutrition/natural medicine/disease prevention, tantra, yoga, etc. then all become areas of utmost importance and significance. With more time to focus on healing and pleasure in a post-backwards society, we can learn more about our bodies and Nature, diagnose and treat health problems naturally and more effectively, and realize our full potential for health and happiness.

Another crucial component to becoming aware of your conscience is to slow down with your everyday activities. Rushing through life causes stress as well as greatly decreasing the chances you will notice or take care of any growing problems in your life. This could mean letting your home become filthy to the point where it is unhealthy, or not maintaining your car and then one day it breaks down and leaves you stranded, or never flossing and then your teeth fall out in old age, or you don’t stretch and exercise regularly and so suffer the consequences, etc. We often neglect that which needs attention just as we neglect our conscience, and so problems and irritations inevitably arise.

Consulting one’s conscience on everyday relations with family, friends, co-workers, etc. is certainly very important; our personal interaction with others has a direct effect on their lives, in varying degrees of positivity or negativity. Countless people have ignored/denied the crucial truth of harm and/or exploitation being committed (in a relationship, at the workplace, animal neglect/abuse, etc.) and by ignoring it, allowed the harm to continue and possibly get worse.

Of course the Practice is difficult and we will make mistakes often, but with discipline we can rise to a higher level of being. For example, personally I have not been living by all the ideals presented in this essay due to my negative habits, etc., but I continue to strive towards them because I believe in their benefits, for myself and others. First we must clarify and refine the direction, or the Way, before we can make progress. That is my intention with presenting these ideas here.

Yet shouldn’t consulting our conscience on the actions, policies, and messages given by our dominant “authority” figures and mass-media, that effect far more people than we do in our personal lives, also be given priority? Isn’t that in fact what we are told Jesus did, when he denounced the hypocrisy and violence of the dominant religion and political empire of his day? So today we must be aware of those same destructive forces that live on in the current destructive status-quo paradigm. If you can see the blatant truth of the evil of Statism, act on it. Reject social-systems based on aggression and slavery. Every person does make a difference. If the truth about the elections (and social-systems as a whole) and then the truth about 9/11 was also known by all, would we might not have had the “war” (i.e. invasion) in Iraq with its sickening use of depleted uranium weaponry and everything else that has continued to follow in the “war on terror.” If every good-intentioned person in the world had been “eating the apple” and was 100% clear on what is Good & what is Evil, then all the destruction, injustice, and massive suffering could have been met with incredible resistance that could bring it to an end.

Here is another quote that uses the terms “soul’ and “inner compass” in place of conscience or “apple,” but the message is really the same:

“The major threat to external control is our internal guidance system — our souls. To us, our souls are our best friends and most trusted guides. But to the control paradigm, they’re the enemy — what has to be removed in order for external control to work. Only when we’re sufficiently disconnected from our inner compass will we follow outer demands.”

– The Paradigm Conspiracy, by C. Largent and D. Brenton , p. 9

When we are connected to our conscience/soul/spirit/higher-self, in other words when we are aligned with God’s Will, we also become connected to an outside world that becomes much more interactive, through synchronicity/guidance and positive circumstances that follow an inner transformation. When we become happier, healthier, and more at peace through a “Joyful Rebellion” against the destructive status-quo, we also may discover our passion for Life that had been covered in negativity and inner/outer oppression. Kenneth MacLean, author of The Vibrational Universe, in an interview in Evolve! magazine said: “[P]assion is discouraged simply because it is such a high vibration/emotion relative to the society at large, and there is a genuine fear [by authority figures] that a passionate person is a dangerous person. There is a concern that our society would be turned upside down if people were allowed to find their own way without direction from the authorities.” Indeed, and a society that is Orwellian/backwards should be turned upside down! When our “leaders” are taking us in the opposite direction to where we should be headed, revolutionary change is needed.

Conclusion

Eating the pure apple (consulting our conscience), is only the first step of course, action is the second. Knowledge is only valuable if acted upon, our Salvation is not automatic after reciting some words, we actually need to align with Love & Truth, i.e. with the Good. We must every day eat the pure apple of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so that we can then act on that Knowledge and always choose the right over the wrong; by doing so, we can find our way back to Paradise, back to the Kingdom of Heaven, gladly doing God’s Will.So again, Adam & Eve, in a rational, true and moral perspective, would have stayed in Paradise by always choosing the positive action over the negative; by acting in accordance with the Knowledge of what’s truly Good, experiencing that it was always to their own benefit, bringing them continued happiness. The same holds true in the real world, right here, right now.

“Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.” – Albert Schweitzer

[updated May 13th, 2014] by Colin D. Donoghue

Caring about how we are effecting the Earth’s ecosystem should be a basic tenant of humanity, since the health and survival of our species depends on a healthy environment, but a lot of people don’t seem to care at all. The petroleum, nuclear, natural gas, coal, logging and livestock industries are destroying the environment at a scale never before seen in human history. The relationship between humans & the Earth has become an increasingly abusive one, to the point that it may result in ecological collapse. The glaciers keep melting, the temperature (and cancer rate) keeps rising, the weather becomes more destructive… and we are just letting these government-backed industries continue to lead us on a path of devastation and suffering. Earth Day passes once again while the obvious solutions to our own sickness and the sick ecosystem, most importantly veganic homesteading and industrial hemp production, still remain restricted by those who undemocratically control our lives, and of course, tax dollars. Most Americans would love to live more naturally and self-sufficiently, but cannot due to land costs and taxation. So, while we wait (or don’t wait) for the Right Revolution, there is something that effects the environment in a major way that most of us have choice over on a daily basis: the food we eat.

Here’s an amazing fact that is extremely under-reported: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that animal wastes pollute U.S. waterways more than all other industrial sources of water pollution, combined. And yet instead of calling for an end to factory farming, many environmental groups mostly ignore it (as explained in the documentary “Cowspiracy“) and instead suggest reforms that would have little positive impact. And its not just the water that the livestock industry is polluting. From ODE Magazine, December 2007:

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a report in 2006 called Livestock’s Long Shadow.

“The FAO concluded that the livestock industry accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than is produced by every form of transportation combined.”

“Consumers are told to conserve by switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, to take public transportation more often, to turn off the TV when they’re not watching. Why aren’t environmental organizations telling them to eat less meat?”

Veganism is the “elephant in the room” that isn’t being discussed because of ingrained conditioning as to what a “normal” diet is.

Why do most people claim to be against violence, yet participate in it everyday? It is because of false beliefs, a false morality, that says sometimes mass-murder and slavery is actually good and natural for humans. “I’m no mass-murderer or slave-driver” you may be thinking, but if you eat animal products, then that’s really not true. Getting vegan foods is extremely easy. We can choose foods that involve suffering, violence and environmental destruction, or those that do not. We don’t need to eat animal products for optimum health, or hunt animals for survival; we only have to make nonviolent choices at the supermarket, farmers market, a community garden, or on your own homestead.

“Children can, generally, make the philosophical switch easier than adults because the plant-based diet and related issues of compassionate living resonate perfectly with the innocence of childhood. To treat one animal as family and another as food, to continually feel sick and tired, to consider preventable open-heart surgery as “routine” and part of the aging process, or to watch others suffering are ideas that are inherently not acceptable to children. It seems to me tolerance for such ideas can only be achieved by repetitive cultural teaching of numbness. Being numb to animals in pain, numb to our effect on the ecosystem, [numb to thousands of civilians being killed by the US military/CIA/Blackwater, etc. I would like to add], and even numb to our to our own body’s cries for proper care are hallmarks of adults and older children in mainstream society.” – Kerrie Saunders, PhD (www. drfood.org)

I have seen video of the hellish experiences cows, pigs, chickens, etc. go through during captivity, transport and slaughter; it is perhaps the greatest motivator to change to a vegan diet. Short documentaries like “Meet Your Meat” and “Farm to Fridge” show you truth behind the animal flesh you eat, often without any thought of where and how it made its way to your mouth. If ever there was a hell on earth, it is the experience many animals go through in becoming food and during animal experimentations. Isn’t there something ethically wrong with tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves against us? Rather than go into the gorish details of what I know occurs, I will leave it to you to take personal responsibility and investigate this for yourself.

~~~

I have heard some repeated counter-arguments to adopting a vegan diet, and all have been unjustified. To the belief that we were “meant to” eat meat, I ask “says who?” Did you have a conversation with God and she/he/it told you you’re meant to eat animals? I doubt it. And if you happen to be Christian, the Bible actually says the opposite, on the first page! To quote from the book of Genesis, page 1:

“Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”

And also from the Old Testament we find:

“He who kills a bull, it is as if he slays a man.” (Isaiah 66:3)

Also from chapter 22 of the Dead Sea Scrolls it is written that Jesus said:

“For I tell you truly, man is more than beast. But he who kills a beast without cause, though the beast attack him not, through lust for slaughter, or for its flesh, or its hide, or yet for its tusks, evil is the deed which he does, for he is turned into a wild beast himself.”

To assume that animals were “made for humans to eat” lacks any plausible foundation. Seed bearing fruit however is obviously designed and intended to be eaten, so its seeds can return to the earth in fertilizer, so new fruit may grow. And many plants can be harvested over and over again without resulting in the death of the plant; another indication of its design to be used for food. We do not find such obvious design for food consumption in animals, who feel enormous amounts of physical and emotional pain like we humans do when are bodies are cut or our children are taken away from us and killed. A vegan diet is also better for own well-being; meat and dairy products are generally loaded with fat, hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. All of these can lead to disease and cancers. (Some also believe that eating animal flesh lowers our vibration due to the violence associated with it, and is therefore an obstacle to a spiritual path.)

Scientifically, we have the jaw structure, digestive system, etc. of an herbivore. The most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted, The China Study, concluded that human physiology reacts best to a vegan diet! The argument that you can’t be healthy and get the protein you need without meat and dairy is completely false. You can, and the protein from plants is more easily absorbed by the body. The human body does not require meat to reach optimum health, and in fact some of the most fit and healthy bodies ever to walk this Earth were formed with vegan diets (and of course a lot of training!). Many of the world’s top athletes have vegan diets, including vegan body-builder Kenneth G.Williams, pictured here:

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Getting back to the environment, a major reason for continued deforestation (along with not using hemp) is the expansion of land used for livestock. Deforestation is causing major ecological imbalances, and a meat-eating diet is directly linked to it.

About ninety percent of all our agricultural resources are used for the feeding of livestock. The land could be used instead to grow plant-foods to directly feed the hungry and starving, plant-foods like environmentally beneficial and nutrient-dense hempseed.

“Everyone on Earth could be fed easily because we currently grow more than enough grain to feed ten billion people; our current practice of feeding this grain to untold billions of animals and eating them forces over a billion of us to endure chronic malnutrition and starvation while another billion suffer from the obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer linked with eating diets high in animal foods. The drugs we take to combat these diseases are discharged through the urine, flow into the water and become yet another major stream that adds to the pollution of our Earth.” (p. 191)

From environmental destruction to inflicting torturous pain on other beings, the modern meat industry is a clear example of something “bad.” That’s right, I made a moral judgment! I must be an extremist! (Or so says modern Sophists in America society conditioned into suppressing the use of their own conscience). The experience of pain in other mammals, birds and fish is virtually the same as our own. For those that say that there is no difference between killing plants and animals, they are basically delusional, ignoring the fact that animals definitely feel pain, have emotions and want to live, while picking an apple off a tree remains incomparable. Animals have feelings, have consciousness on some level, and so therefore should be treated as such, not just as animated food. Would you like to be imprisoned, tortured and then brutally murdered so someone could eat your flesh for dinner? I didn’t think so. Non-aggression remember? The foundation of a moral society? Speaking of which here are some salient excerpts from the excellent book The Nonviolent Revolution by Nathaniel Altman:

“In addition to its impact on animal welfare, a vegetarian lifestyle offers additional ‘ahimsic benefits’ towards one’s body, the environment, and the right utilization of the earth’s resources….The practice of feeding plant protein to livestock instead of directly to people places a tremendous strain on the earth’s resources, and contributes to the shortage of food around the world… In addition, a vegetarian diet calls for far less water than a diet containing meat… [which] utilizes some 2,500 gallons of water per day (including irrigation ,animal drinking water, and the large amount of water needed for the actual processing of meat), while the pure vegetarian (vegan) diet uses only 300 gallons per day. [According to Dr. Aaron Altschul of Georgetown University]”

Some more poignant information from Alternatives magazine (Winter 2007-08) in an article by Bruce Friedrich:

“Even leaving aside all the animal welfare issues, a vegan diet is the only reasonable diet for people in the developed world who care about the environment or global poverty… Environmental Defense, on its website, notes: “If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains… the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. Roads.” Imagine if we stopped eating animal products altogether… Vegan foods cut out the factory farms, the slaughterhouses, and multiple stages of heavily polluting tractor-trailer trucks, as well as the resources (and pollution) involved in each of those stages… Choose vegan – and preferably organic [and local] – foods. It’s bad for the environment to eat animals. It’s time to stop looking for loopholes.”

And since I’m a fan of being blunt and cutting through the bullshit when appropriate, I’ll share such a statement from the book The Real Forbidden Fruit: How Meat Destroys Paradise And How Veganism Can Get It Back by Jeff Popick:

“There are many well-intentioned people who consider themselves to be environmentalists, and yet many of these people eat animal products, even though it is animal products that are primarily responsible for the demise of the environment. Eating meat kills animals, people and the planet. To be an environmentalist, one must be vegan.”

I know black & white statements are unpopular among many in this corrupted culture, but the truth must be told. Truth! Dare I say it in this world filled with post-modern nihilists? Total non-dualism/non-judgment is an idea that permeates all areas of modern culture, from those that are “cool” to those that are “square,” from the young to the old, from the academic to the spiritual, and it is corrupting the progress of mankind via its nonsensical rejection of conscientiousness. If you think there is no truth, no good or bad in the world, I’m sorry to say, you’ve become delusional. Instead of citing those that have backwards/insane ideas about morality and the environment (as supposed proof that all morality is bunk), why don’t you stand up for the sane perspective? I address this issue more in my essay “Eating the Apple.”

So, if we want a healthy, peaceful and sustainable world, that means: No war, No nukes, No coal or uranium mining, No clear-cutting, No petroleum or natural gas drilling, and No meat.

Obama as president is a good sign, and is a good thing, as far as progress from racism goes. For those racist dinosaurs that still roam America, this is a clear message that their ideas are no longer mainstream in the slightest, judging a man or woman by the color of his/her skin is extremely ignorant, and the mindset is gratefully being evolved out of human consciousness. That being said, I’m afraid this is not as “historic” a moment for “change” as the media has been portraying it.

Remember the Constitution? Remember our RIGHTS that are still being violated by the Patriot Act and similar legislation? Remember that over a million civilians have died (and are still being killed) in occupations based on complete lies?! Remember that the official 9/11 story doesn’t hold up to science or common sense, and is still being used to justify the killing of civilians in multiple countries? On the “White House Christmas Special” with Oprah Winfrey that showed tonight on TV, when she asked him about his unpopular decision to send 30,000 more troops to Pakistan, guess what Barack mentions right away? 9/11, of course. This “just war” as he put it, is to protect us from the same characters in a story that has been proven false in multiple ways. Also he talked about how he thinks everyday about the unemployed and poor in America, struggling to pay their mortgage and afford college… it’s important to notice that both things Barack mentioned people are struggling to do is pay off loans from banks… the same banks he gave hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars to in the charade known as the bail out… (See my “Redefining Poverty & Wealth” post for more on that).

Also let us not forget that the 2000 & 2004 presidential elections were clearly rigged, and that corporations control the election process. Why did the corporate media completely ignore Green Party Candidate Cynthia Mckinney, who along with Congressman Dennis Kucinich and others, were talking about 9/11 Truth, The Federal Reserve, and Election Truth? Is Obama winning really a “miracle?” Or is it just the move needed by the people that really run the show, to get the support they need for their “Big Picture“ / “Esoteric” agenda (i.e. more centralized power, less personal freedom)? Obama pushing MANDATORY health insurance (violating our Rights and giving a windfall perpetual profit to the insurance corporations), and increasing the authority of the Federal Reserve (a fraudulent private banking cartel), and also this:

…are three strong indications that his message of “Change” and “Hope” is really just hype and propaganda.

If there’s another act of “terror”, as Biden, Powell, Brzezinski, Albright and the Pentagon have “guaranteed” there will be, who better then the messianic Obama to talk the People into going along with a police state agenda? Less racism is great, but so is the end of imperial occupations and “terrorist” acts based on lies, so is the end of the Federal Reserve and our central bank debt-based economy. Lets get real people, anyone who isn’t a moron isn’t racist. Can we move on to the 21st century now, toward the Right Revolution? ——–> http://wp.me/plaBY-45

We need to focus on whats really important, and has always been whats most important: Truth, Peace, Freedom and Rights. Naomi Wolf’s books The End of America & Give Me Liberty should be on every “American”‘s bookshelf, if you haven’t read them yet, I highly recommend you do so.

This is a transparent game they’re playing, despite what the corporate media presents to us as reality. The “Problem, Reaction, Solution” strategy of tyrants/fascists is something all should now be familiar with thanks to the 9/11 Truth Movement. The evidence is so overwhelming that the official 9/11 story is false anyone with common sense can see it, if they really look into it (sources below). So that information is of course being repressed, and often attempts are made to discredit those giving factual info on 9/11, trying to make it out to be some “crazy conspiracy theory,” while the truth is the official story is the nonsensical theory. So many people are still deceived because they trust the corporate media and don’t investigate things for themselves, so we now have the Nazi-esque Dept. of Homeland Security, suppressing dissent throughout the nation (violating countless citizen’s rights) while urging us to “be ready” (ready.gov) and to “prepare” for upcoming emergencies. And guess what the “solution” will be, just as it always has been throughout history? More centralized power, less personal freedoms. We must always consider “Who benefits?” Freedom must stay at the forefront of our consciousness as what is always most important.

” If the American People ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the People to Whom it belongs!”

– President Thomas Jefferson

So along with continued financial tyranny, what else should we “be ready” for? I suggest you read some of these “Executive Orders” that support various dictatorial powers and FEMA police-state powers (mass illegal detentions of citizens, etc.), in the event of a “National Emergency”: http://www.freedomfiles.org/war/fema.htm

Among the many “Anti-Terror” laws (Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, etc.) that were passed with little to no attention by the corporate media, were details such as allowing martial law and the suspension of elections altogether if another attack or major crisis emerges. Although suspending elections are unlikely in any scenario; you see, there’s really no need when they are rigged in the first place. The evidence that the 2000 and 04 elections were stolen is so vast it makes the Obama victory suspect; not that he didn’t get the most votes, I’m sure he did, but we should be skeptical that the people that really run America (central banks/multi-national corporations) didn’t choose him as President long before the public cast their votes. Why would they suddenly relinquish their control of America? They’ve suddenly grown tired of fascism and are now compassionate beings? I doubt it.

Obama may have good intentions, but he obviously is unable to make any major changes to this destructive empire, appearing to be more a public relations spokesperson than “leader of the free world.”

So what manufactured crisis may come next, leading to the “unpopular decisions” that Biden said they would have to make?

Here are possibilities:

1) Full Economic Depression (engineered by the central banks)/Complete collapse of US Dollar followed by the “solution” of a North American Union and the Amero currency.
2) Avian/Swine Flu or other biological illness outbreak (state-sponsored).
3) Another “terrorist” attack, possibly blamed on Iran, N. Korea, or their old CIA standby “Al Queda”. (Illegal arrests and detention of activists, etc. who will be labeled “enemy combatants” is also likely in this scenario.)

There is a lot of evidence to suggest all of these are possible, and even likely, due to the amount of preparation that has already been done by the neo-con/fascists to carry out each of them. (Look into each are you not familiar with that evidence.) The reason why none of it is really far-fetched is because it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt that 9/11 was an act of state-sponsored terrorism, and therefore something similar happening while the same perpetrators are in power is actually probable. It’s important for the public to be aware of these possibilities, so that if one actually occurs, they wont be fooled again.

If there is another trauma inducing event, please don’t buy the line they feed you through their 4th Branch (aka the Corporate Media), like you may have bought the9/11 Fairy Tale. Don’t allow your Rights (and democracy) to be ignored in the name of their latest deception.

The real “change” we should demand Congress and Obama/Biden bring is the repeal of all unconstitutional laws that have been passed in the name of this manufactured “war on terror,” and get the troops out of all operations supposedly justified by the same deception.

Over 1 million Iraqi and Afghani civilians (a fact the corporate media ignores), and thousands of our troops, have already been killed on an operation based on lies. The only thing that can probably stop their insane imperial/police-state agenda, bring our troops home and get our Rights back, is the same thing I and many others have been saying for years now: Accountability for war crimes, torture and violating our Constitution & expose the 9/11 Lie which is the foundation of the entire imperialist agenda, through quality sources of information, like these:

a) Books:
1.”The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions”, “Debunking 9/11 Debunking”, and “9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press”, all by David Ray Griffin
2.“The Terror Timeline” by Paul Thompson
3.“Crossing the Rubicon” by Michael Ruppert 4.“The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism” by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

It’s an old game people and it’s as simple as this: There have been a few that have always sought increased wealth, power and control no matter what harm that causes, and there have also always been the many that know there is much more to life than that and have no desire to enslave or harm anyone. The battle between good and evil, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s time to stop buying the lies of mass murderers and “strike at the root of evil” as Thoreau said, and in this time and this place, that means abolishing the Federal Reserve (and all of our monetary-dependence through self-sufficiency and autonomy) and exposing the official 9/11 conspiracy theory for what is: pure bullshit.